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Sundar Pichai: Google’s Frontier Imperative, Compute Scarcity Dilemmas, Future AI Products and Businesses

Alphabet CEO Sundar Pichai has little patience for doubts about Google’s willingness or capacity to compete at the frontier of AI. His company’s latest Gemini 4 Argon model — long-promised and recently delivered — beats OpenAI and Anthropic’s latest public models on coding, math, science, and knowledge-work benchmarks and has placed Google’s AI back among the world’s best. Amid chatter that Google was fine with good-enough lightweight ‘Flash’ models, Pichai pushed back hard against any suggestion that company is limiting its research ambitions. “We won’t do it any other way,” he told me in a Big Technology Podcast interview recorded this week at Google’s Mountain View headquarters. Pursuing cutting-edge research is costly for Google, requiring compute and chips that otherwise could be sold at a high markup by its cloud business. But Pichai said allocating resources to frontier AI development is “ground zero” for Google. “Our cloud business is at any given moment in time forgoing short-term revenues because we are making compute trade-offs to support frontier AI development,” Pichai told me. In our conversation, we discussed Argon (which Pichai says processed three times as many tokens as Gemini 3 in the 72 hours after launch), AI’s role in developing better models, the AI interface of the future, competition with OpenAI, Google’s partnerships with Anthropic and Apple, data centers in space, and the nature of his optimism. You can read the full conversation, lightly edited for length and clarity, below, or listen to it on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, YouTube, or your podcast app of choice. Alex Kantrowitz: Google is back at the frontier with Gemini 4 Argon, which beats OpenAI’s and Anthropic’s public models on benchmarks spanning coding, math, science, and knowledge work. The conventional wisdom was that Google had given up on the frontier to focus on fast, good-enough models for its products. That was wrong? Sundar Pichai: Very wrong. Look, we are so committed to being at the frontier. It’s in our DNA. We won’t do it any other way. We’ve been thinking about the AI frontier for well over a decade now. The frontier is very dynamic. It’s very competitive. It’s very exciting. I couldn’t be more pleased with how Argon has come together. We took our time with it. We made sure we tested it safely and deployed it carefully. We took a bit longer than our other models, given its capabilities. Across the board, be it for agentic work, knowledge work, coding, creative tasks, Argon is one of the really good frontier models. The first 72 hours since we launched, it’s almost up to 25 trillion tokens used, which is about three times what Gemini 3.0 had in the first 72 hours. And we are capacity constrained as we are serving it. Excited, but there are always areas….. You know, the frontier is very dynamic, and you have to keep evolving the models. There are areas which we can see we need to improve as well. We’ll be at work on all of that as well. Which areas? On any given model, Argon would be across the board better at everything if you just look even two months back. But the space is so evolving. Even on coding, for example, there are pockets where we know we need to do better, and there’s clear feedback. We’ll make it better. The argument for standard models is that they’re already good enough to build great products, with the frontier valuable only for certain tasks. Meta built Muse with good models rather than the best, and Google could put standard models into Maps, Gmail, and Search. Why isn’t that sufficient? It’s definitely not how I have thought about it at all. We are deeply committed to driving the state of the art and actually pushing where this technology can go, all the way from transformers. That’s a journey we’ve been on. You will see us continue to do that. When you’re at the frontier, you get an earlier look into the emerging capabilities, earlier than others, which helps you better prepare for the future. We are fortunate to have a wide set of opportunities across consumer and enterprise. Some of our cloud customers, for sure, want the model at the frontier. The frontier models will be better at developing the next set of models in an era of recursive self-improvement. I would argue it matters there. Internally, we have definitely seen a steep point of inflection by deploying Argon to our developers. It definitely tackles problems which our previous models could not do. Being at the frontier puts you at the innovation frontier and helps you drive that as well. There is room for models of all sizes and capabilities. That’s why we did Flash, Flash-Lite, etc. I agree with you that you can develop very good product experiences with not necessarily the most frontier model, because they tend to be slower and more expensive too. But we care about the Pareto frontier, and we’re committed to doing all of that. You said developing frontier models gives you a look at what’s coming. What do you see on the horizon? What makes this moment so exciting is you build something which you think is a culmination of months of work, and you put it out. You already see clear headroom ahead. We’ve all been working on these agentic, long-horizon capabilities, but clearly the frontier is going to have multiple of these agents working together to do things. That’s an example of an exciting paradigm underway. It’s also clear to me that users, both in consumer and enterprise, will have access to some multi-agent framework for them, working all the time doing things. It feels like a moment of infinite possibilities. Sergey Brin said one of Argon’s core innovations was relying more on the model to help develop the model. Yet incidents involving OpenAI’s bots breaking containment and Google’s bots accessing a site they shouldn’t have suggest these systems still aren’t perfectly aligned. Isn’t there reasonable cause for concern about accelerating toward recursive self-improvement? There are three parts to your question. Let’s first talk about RSI itself. You’re right, Sergey mentioned RSI being a critical contributor as we are developing Argon. But to be very clear, today, in a continuum, we are pretty far from the end state of RSI or something like that. The right way to describe it is you have RSI loops along with AI researchers in various aspects of model development. You almost have agents helping AI researchers in some automated way work together to build these models. It’s good to at least understand where we are today, and it’s super exciting. I expect that continuum to keep making progress as we go into next year. The second question is around safety. Security comes from defense in depth. You’re talking about alignment, obviously. We all are doing a lot of work to make sure the models are as aligned as possible. But it’s an active area of research, and there are clear gaps. That’s not the only thing we rely on. You have the work you do on alignment, but beyond that, we put a lot of effort into real-time monitoring as these models are working. Making sure you have good telemetry into what’s happening so that you can intervene in real time if you see unexpected behaviors. How you do that, the architecture with which you do that, how you make sure it’s all sandboxed and isolated in a way that it can continue doing its job during real-time monitoring — these are all areas of investment. Obviously, when we deploy these models, giving customers, enterprises, control, both with real-time monitoring, but their ability to decide where they deploy, what type of data which models ever have access to, etc. All that work is very, very important, and we are doing a lot of that. As an industry, we need to constantly up our game and take the time to do all this stuff, including dedicating the compute required to make sure you can safely deploy these models. The third part is: Is it all enough? This is why there are a lot of conversations in the industry, and I think it’s reasonable to be worried. The right way to approach something you worry about is early on thinking about what more we can do. As an industry, you’re definitely seeing increased levels of work on alignment, testing for safety, etc., as we deploy these models. The next step would be developing better standards so there are cross-industry standards of how we do these things, including the ability to evaluate using independent evaluators. If you look at areas like financial controls, we have accounting standards, we have independent auditors. Those are all the next natural steps for us as an industry to work toward, and regulation will end up playing a role as we go through all of that as well. Google pursues both language models and world models, while some other AI companies like OpenAI have focused more heavily on LLMs as the path to AGI. Why is world-model research important to you? As humans, you obviously perceive the world around you, and you’re taking all those inputs. Making sure these models are able to understand the laws of physics, simulate the world in high fidelity. All that, I think, are key enabling blocks for intelligence. We are working across all possible applications of this. Take an area like robotics. It’s not an accident: If you look at embodied reasoning benchmarks, Argon is state of the art. That all comes from our experience building world models. Inherently, I would expect there will be architectures which will converge all of this in the future. But for us, we view this as, today, this jagged frontier that is intelligence. We want to be at the frontier of all the possible approaches, and that will help us both drive better research, better insights, and develop a much better AGI model, is how we think about it. Some people argue Google should focus on selling its computing resources rather than using them for AI research. Cloud wants to sell compute at a high markup, while researchers need a very big computer to build the best models. How do you balance those demands? Ground zero for us is making sure we are investing in the compute that’s needed to be at the AI frontier. In 2015, I set the company to be AI-first. AI is that key horizontal ingredient across everything we do, all the way from Search to Cloud to Waymo. That is ground zero for us, making sure both for research and developing the models that we have enough compute needed. Beyond that, we have these independent businesses which each have their own long-range plans. They’re using those long-range plans to project forward, and we plan for compute for all of them. The cloud team, they have a business and they have a projection and they have demand signals. They have committed contracts. With that help, we can plan on a long-term compute trajectory for them. We’re fortunate to have this wide set of opportunities. There’s no company in the world which isn’t making trade-offs at any given moment in time. But the first principles we operate on is making sure we have enough compute to invest in the frontier, and that’s non-negotiable, and everything else works on top. Remember, we are building our own compute, our own data centers. There are long lead times. The compute we have today is a function of decisions I made in 2024. Even if you think back to a year from today, last year the agentic coding takeoff hadn’t happened. Today, obviously, when you sit and look at anything, everyone is short—not just us, other companies—and everyone wishes you had two times what you had planned for. That comes with the territory. At any given moment in time, we are planning for what we would need two to three years out in the future. You’re going to find some decisions you make may look suboptimal two years out, depending on where the state of the art is. I don’t spend too much time thinking about it. The way I think about compute allocation is making sure Google DeepMind, both for research and frontier model development, is cutting edge in terms of compute access. After that, we plan for all our businesses. It’s great we can provide our compute to other people too, like we have done. It allows us to scale that up, get real tests for it in the widest application set possible, test it in the real world, and make sure we are at the cutting edge of technology at every layer of our AI stack as well. Ben Horowitz relayed on a podcast that Andy Jassy had said compute was sold out until 2028. Are you seeing the same thing? If today a customer is coming out and asking us for compute in ’27, that is incredibly difficult to do. Even last year we went out and leased some short-term compute to accommodate some customers and help them out. But yes, we are all dealing with similar timelines. Every major technology shift seems to involve overbuilding, from railroads to fiber. Do you think that’s happening here? It depends on the time frames you’re looking at. This level of build, if I take a long enough time frame, it makes complete sense to me. We are at early stages of the most consequential technology ever, and this is not like fiber. It’s not dark. We are using it. We are capacity constrained on a daily basis. The applications, the underlying technology is improving rapidly. But running a company, the way I work through the moment is you look at your demand signals. You look at your committed revenue opportunities that you’re getting in the form of contracts. You balance that with the underlying technical capability, or internally you balance how we are using it internally, the model trajectories. Based on all that, you take a disciplined approach—a confident, aggressive, but disciplined approach—to plan out compute. But when you talk about the broader economy as a whole, you’re having people operate with various levels of risk. I focus on what I can control as a company and plan through it. If your question is, can there be an overbuild? Yes, because you can have some constrained components. Remember, what matters is a set of everything you need to build out that compute. Memory, electricity, electricians…. Land. Like 2,000 components or more. You could get constrained at some point. There could be things which cause bottlenecks, and then you could have overbuilds. There could be external shocks to the economy. There are macro risks. All that is possible at any given time. But am I confident that the compute we are planning for, we will have uses for it given enough time? Absolutely, yes. I was in the room when you said AI would be as profound as fire and electricity. If you believe that, shouldn’t you give researchers the biggest possible computer, even at the expense of today’s cloud profits? We’re all doing some form of that. Our cloud business is at any given moment in time forgoing short-term revenues because we are making compute trade-offs to support frontier AI development. What you’re seeing is true already. But you want to be thoughtful. Even our AI researchers have some constraints, which are also good. That’s what inspires creativity. That’s what helps you come up with a more efficient algorithmic breakthrough, maybe to use less memory. What we are committed to is to invest what’s needed to stay at the frontier. OpenAI President Greg Brockman told me a few months ago that the ideal AI product might have no interface at all—just as natural as conversation. What do you think the interface looks like in the age of AI? Computing historically has been humans adapting to computing. With AI, it’ll be the other way around. The technology will adapt seamlessly to how humans live and go about their day-to-day life. You want to be able to speak to that AI when you want to. It has context. It can be persistently running somewhere, give you continuity. You’re not dealing with a lot of complexity. It’s natural. All that makes sense to me. That doesn’t mean it won’t have any interface, however. Nowadays, even on my phone, Gemini voice models are so good. I can just press the microphone button. I can just ramble. That’s why we call it Rambler. I can ramble. It intelligently corrects with my personal context. Even my friends’ names, weird names, it gets it right, even if it first guesses it wrong. It’s amazing. I’m not going in, backspacing, editing once I finish saying it. It’s remarkable how good it’s gotten. But there are going to be moments you will need an interface. You may want to entertain yourself. You may want to watch a video. You may ask your AI to create something, and you want to watch it, consume it. The way I think about it is, you want it to be as seamless and as natural as possible, and that you are not doing the hard work adapting to whatever the interface is. The technology is adapting to how you’re working at any given moment in time. When I asked Sam Altman about competition from Google, he argued that OpenAI was building AI-native products and implied Google was bolting AI onto existing ones. Do you accept that framing, and can a “bolt-on” compete with an AI-native product? First of all, it’s a very dynamic moment. We are all pushing each other. OpenAI has pushed us as a company too. This is not just we are doing something to them. Far from it. Yes, Google went into its own version of a code red too. In the AI moment, all of us have to respond with varying levels of urgency at any given moment in time. We are constantly building new products as well. Gemini was built from the ground up as a product—the Gemini app I’m talking about. Or tomorrow, as all of us are adapting to agents, are you bolting agents onto ChatGPT, or are they building it natively? How would you think about that? You can always put these questions back. I don’t think of it that way. I think of it as you want to build world-class product experiences that are AI-native and they are winning. Some of it is adapting products, some of it is rethinking new experiences. They will all be part of how you approach this moment. How do you expect to make money from these AI interfaces? If an agent recommends a product and I buy it, should it take a cut of the sale, even if that’s disclosed? I’m going to put enterprise aside. Consumers are going to increasingly value this technology. Take software developers today. Developers are willing to pay for these coding models because it really helps make them more productive. Nobody would want to code the way they were coding three years ago, or even the same time last year. When you’re delivering value, there’s value to be had. I’ve never seen examples where consumer products really scale to billions of users, where people are using it intensely, and haven’t had monetization to go along with it. If you’re providing value to people, there is inherent value to be had. The nature of it may change. You’re asking a scenario in which agents are doing stuff for you. At the end of the day, you will have commercial needs. The agents need to fulfill those commercial needs. The providers on the other side are going to see value in that. There’s going to be some mechanism by which it gets fleshed out. That’s what an efficient system does. But what matters is that you’re building those world-class consumer experiences. I promised myself one product feature request: Can you make Gemini-powered search in Gmail as good as searching Gmail through ChatGPT? What’s going on here? One of the exciting things we announced recently is the unified Gemini agent for enterprise, and we’re bringing that to consumers. These are persistent agents which run 24/7 in the cloud. We’re spinning up a micro VM effectively for every query, and from the runtime, the harness, the model—it’s all a headless service. It’ll work everywhere, and it has your context with you. You can address this agent whether you’re in Workspace, in Search, in Gemini. Agents are going to drive this unification from a customer experience, which people are looking for. When you have a broad product portfolio and you’re moving forward fast, there are always areas where you’re moving forward faster than some other areas. That’s valid feedback. But we are putting a lot of time and effort into making sure, as we build out our agentic experience, that unification and that capability works well across all these services. People have asked where Google’s equivalent of Muse or Dots is. Do you anticipate creating a new product to compete with them? Our goal with Gemini is to be a personal, proactive, and powerful assistant. That’s what we are working toward. You saw us describe the early versions of it at Google I/O this year with Spark. Effectively, already, if you open the Gemini app as a Pro or an Ultra user, you see Chat and Task, and they start giving you that agentic experience. With Argon now, that capability is dramatically accelerated. What we announced recently in our enterprise event, we are bringing that to consumers as well. Soon in Gemini, you will be able to ask something, and it’s a continuum. You don’t need to think about whether you’re asking a chat or an agentic task. It’ll just automatically do the right thing, and it can work persistently in the background securely and get things done for you. Already, empirically, when I look at what’s coming into Gemini in our app, last year you would have tagged them and most of them would have been chats. But a steadily growing percentage is already agentic tasks in Gemini. Yes, we are going to bring personal agents to our consumers. It’ll work in the Gemini app. It’ll work in Google Search. It’ll work in Gmail. You can address it, call it, etc. We want to make sure we’re getting it right. It’ll be powered by Argon, and we are very excited to bring it to our users. Google has invested and committed tens of billions of dollars to Anthropic. What do you see in Dario Amodei that makes you want such a deep investment and partnership? Very early on, when we looked at the founding team of Anthropic, it was very clear to us this was a world-class team which was involved in some of the earliest GPT models. We were quickly able to assess that they would be at the frontier. We’ve always tried to identify and partner with companies which would be at the cutting edge of technology. We’ve done that with SpaceX. We’ve done that with Anthropic. That’s what we saw, and we had a chance to partner. Is your partnership with Apple to license Gemini for Siri expanding, contracting, or standing still? For both us and Apple, that partnership was about translating the capabilities of AI into better experiences for users. I thought Apple has done a phenomenal job of incorporating—they customize these models and build it into Siri—and it’s been great to see the reception. We are committed to doing more. You’re going to do more with them? There’s nothing specific to comment, but it’s a partnership. It’s working well. What have you learned so far about the feasibility of data centers in space? It’s a very exciting project. Projects like this remind me—I still recall that moment in the desert for the DARPA Grand Challenge, watching the Stanley car compete in it, which ended up being the basis for Waymo. With all these technologies, you’re at a moment in time where it looks a bit like sci-fi, but 10 to 20 years down the line, it’s actually working in a meaningful way. I feel the same in space. We’ve always believed in betting big on these technologies. Quantum has been a great example of it. We’re probably 10 years into the journey. Waymo, we are almost 20 years into the journey. Space, we are two to three years into the journey. It’s clear to me that it’s an approach which will make a lot of sense in the future. Being in sub-synchronous orbits with 24/7 access to the most abundant form of energy we have access to will make a lot of sense for this exponential increase in compute that we are going to need. Having said that, this is a challenging project. The team has disciplined milestones. It was a super exciting milestone to send the TPUs up to space. Sometime, as we are speaking, we are expecting a “hello world” moment from them. I look forward to seeing that happen, and we’ll continue investing here too. You previously said 25% of the code written within Google was written by AI. What’s the number today? That number in our world today is meaningless in the sense that every part of what we now touch is influenced by AI deeply. What we are tracking with Argon, for example, it’s been a point of inflection. People are using Argon to really go tackle complex projects, including projects which affect millions of lines of code. In the four weeks since we have launched Argon, we have seen a 30% increase in CLs, and more importantly, almost a similar increase—a one-third decrease in rollbacks. People are writing code more productively and better code with it. We are tracking it with newer metrics now. How are you dealing with opposition to data centers? If you can’t build in the U.S. the way you want to, where else do you go? We’re very committed to building our data centers very responsibly. When I look at our largest data centers in some of the communities where we have been the longest, I visit them, I talk to people. There are people who come and tell us their kids have gone to college because of our investments in these communities, and we’ve grown in those communities. To me, this is about doing it right. Engaging with the communities early, doing it transparently. We are committed to making sure we are bringing incremental power, and we cover 100% of the cost of our power needs for these projects. It’s understanding the impact on neighborhoods and making sure you’re working thoroughly to address them. Done rightly, you can continue making progress. But we are constantly taking feedback into account. I do worry not everyone operates the same way. People have been surprised by data centers showing up in their backyard. Those are all important. As an industry, we should continue to do better. But part of the reason, in a 20-year time frame, we are thinking about things like data centers in space is making sure we are able to put these data centers where maybe the trade-offs will be different. What unproven area of AI is Google working hardest to crack? Is it continual learning—getting models to keep updating after release—or something else? There are multiple parallel paths. You saw with Argon we have a million output tokens. With our Gemini models early on, we had a one-million context window on the input side. These are all examples of breakthroughs we are constantly working on. How do you think about synthetic data? How do you think about continual learning? How do you think about more efficient architectures? We do dedicate a meaningful percentage of our compute to these research bets too. It always goes hand in hand, including our world models. Those are all bets we are placing. Sometimes, as part of these bets, there are ideas that emerge which just make their way into the mainline models. Maybe we don’t fully talk about it, but we have multiple steps in these areas. Working in technology requires optimism that building something will improve the world, but those bets can leave real consequences when they fail. I recently returned to a town in El Salvador where enthusiasm for Bitcoin had given way to unfinished construction and something resembling a ghost town. How do you maintain the optimism you spoke about in your Stanford commencement address while accounting for those risks? I genuinely have a deep conviction that improving technology and improving access to technology makes people’s lives better. It’s been my personal experience in my life, out of which comes that deep conviction, optimism. But with that, I’ve always felt humanity’s journey is always about working hard to harness that technology to make it work well for society. The optimism is not an optimism that you just build whatever you want, whenever. You work hard to make sure you’re building technology in the service of humanity, to make the human condition better. That’s got to be the defining goal as we are approaching it. With that framework, I’m very, very optimistic. We are in very early stages of the kind of progress that we are going to see on many areas. We’re all talking about areas like healthcare. A lot of the progress is ahead. The ability to make things in a fundamentally cheaper way on many things where things have been getting expensive for a long, long time, discovering new materials, etc., which really bend the curve—it’s tough to step today and understand the impact of all that, but they’re going to be very profound. I’m very optimistic, but we have to be rightfully concerned about all the ways this technology can go wrong. Sundar, I know you don’t do many of these. Thank you. Thanks, Alex. Appreciate it.

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Pope hope, that’s entertainment, and getting ahead in the CIA

Happy Friday friends, I want to start by just breathing for all of us a big long collective sigh of relief at the news this week that the pope’s doctors have basically blown the all clear for Leo’s health. Going from knowing nothing to him declaring to the world he needed surgery, to a cancer diagnosis, to bouncing out of the hospital in barely even days, to ringing the bell in less than two weeks is whiplash inducing. But in the best possible way. We are living in a world in which the Roman pontiff, by dint of history, biography and circumstance, is once more at the epicenter of global affairs. Not just conversations about religion, or Christian and post-Christian values, but the bleeding edge of the most pressing issues of human affairs. Think I am exaggerating a touch? Consider the images of the crowds who greeted Leo in Paris just weeks ago, and juxtapose them with the absolute photo negative scenes unfolding there recently. Ask yourself how many world leaders are talking about AI right now and directly citing the pope as they do so. Try to name a country who has had as many top-ranked diplomats in and out of both Russia and Ukraine in the last three years as the Vatican has in the last three months. It has been fascinating to watch Leo XIV emerge as not just a kind of pop culture reference point or totem to be cited (Francis was often name-checked this way) but as a kinetic force in global conversation. Given the state of things, we need global figures of gravitas and values, even better if they have real wisdom behind what they are saying. So news of Leo’s illness was, it seemed to me, a tremor with potentially Richter Scale implications. That not only has the worst not come to pass but instead we’ve had the best of outcomes announced is something to really be grateful for. Humanity, it seems to me, is entering one of its irregular but cyclical phases where the pace of change — technological, social, and geopolitical — outstrips the ability of previously settled norms and received wisdom to cope. Such periods – and I think the first decades of the last century were a similar such time – throw into question the viability of all kinds of institutions. And many of ours have been straining to breaking point for a few years now. The papacy has the power and the potential to be a steadying pole in all of this. That’s my hope, anyway. It’s a lot to freight the office with, though it is arguably its ultimate purpose from its founding, to be a steadying rock on which all that matters can be anchored. It’s also, of course, an intolerable weight of responsibility to place on a single man. But I am encouraged to have hope in – and for – Leo. The apostle whom he succeeds, after all, was famously unequal to some moments, failed some tests of faith, and resiled from taking the road which led ultimately to the circus on Vatican hill. Human frailty and limitations, of health, of character, of temper, can open us to Christ, whose strength is greatest in our weakness, so St. Paul learned. That gives me hope, and I am sure it consoles Leo, too. And so I will continue to pray for him. Because we need apostles of rock right now. Here’s the news. Subscribe The News The Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued yesterday a new document “Venite ad me: Considerations on the Transmission of the Faith in an Epochal Change.” It’s not a short document, and it is at pains to stress this isn’t a doctrinal note from the dicastery, either. Rather, it brings together reflections on an important issue from the Church around the world. Some of it I actually found really rather powerful. It is, however, 25,000, which is a lot for a busy reader to get through on a weekday. So, you can read our busy reader’s summary right here. — News broke yesterday of an Oct. 22 meeting of U.S. bishops with President Donald Trump. The meeting was organized by an official at the Heritage Foundation, according to several sources close to the meeting. Video of several U.S. bishops praying in the Oval Office over President Trump was posted on social media Thursday afternoon, first by White House Communications Advisor Margo Martin, and then by the official twitter.com account of the Archdiocese of Denver. The meeting has drawn sharp criticism because of its proximity to the upcoming midterm Congressional elections, in which Democrats are widely expected to win control of the House of Representatives, while control of the Senate remains closely contested. Sources close to the bishops’ conference told The Pillar that some USCCB senior officials were surprised by the existence of the meeting when video of it first emerged online. And a source close to conference president Archbishop Paul Coakley of Oklahoma City told The Pillar that the archbishop was “deeply frustrated” by the occasion of the meeting. An official conference spokesperson told The Pillar that the meeting was “not organized with or by the USCCB” and was “not affiliated with the conference.” You can read the whole story here. — The next National Eucharistic Congress will be held in Indianapolis in 2029, a return to the city that hosted the last gathering in 2024. You read it here first. By here, I don’t mean this newsletter, I mean at The Pillar. We broke the story this week. It’s a big deal, in as much as the last congress was a roaring success and the next installment has the potential to be a real focal point for evangelizing efforts in the coming years. Read all about it here. — As Pope Leo prepares for the longest trip of his pontificate, Church leaders in Uruguay say the pontiff will encounter a highly secularized culture, in a country with a very different Catholic history than many of its South American neighbors. The nation has not had a papal visit since 1988, and leaders who spoke with The Pillar say it has a dire need for evangelization, even amid the prospect of a small revival in faith. This is real reporting on the Church in the country, and frankly a story you simply are not going to be able to read anywhere else. Read the whole thing. — The Archdiocese of Detroit announced this week a plan that would see the vast majority of its parish priests reassigned next summer, amid a restructuring process expected to dramatically shrink the number of parishes in the archdiocese. Archbishop Edward Weisenburger said this week that the plan “asks much of our priests,” but is a “sacrifice they are making as brothers of one, unified presbyterate.” The thing is, as JD pointed out in an analysis yesterday, pastors of parishes have a legal right to stability in office, so the only way this kind of wholesale reassignment goes ahead is if all of the archdiocesan clergy agree to resign. That creates its own kind of legal issues, though, and re-raises longstanding questions about the effectiveness of canonical due process protections for priests when dealing with coercive exercises in authority. Read the whole thing here. — More than three months after the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith issued its decree declaring the excommunication of the leadership of the Society of St. Pius X, questions remain about the full effects of the society’s schism. Specifically, the DDF’s July claim that marriages witnessed and confessions heard by SSPX priests are now invalid remains contested — and it emerged this week it appears that the Vatican’s own legal experts don’t agree. You can read my whole analysis of the situation and what it means here. All I would add is that the DDF’s undeveloped, some would say unsubstantiated, claim about the invalidity of some SSPX sacraments came in their July Explanatory Note on the schismatic consecrations by the society that month. It touches directly on both papal acts of governance — indeed it purports to nullify them — and the most intimate pastoral encounters possible in a parish setting. If there is one aspect of the Francis-era style of governance I would like the curia to finally cut out, root and branch, it would be these attempts to try to effect extraordinarily sensitive legislative acts via a note. — At least a dozen French bishops have spoken out following an eruption of violence on the country’s streets Oct. 17. Not surprisingly, they unanimously condemned the violence, but the length and content of their interventions varied significantly. Several sought to distinguish between the actions of rioters and what they suggested were the legitimate concerns of peaceful young protesters. Many also evoked Pope Leo XIV’s Sept. 25-28 visit to France, suggesting it offered a powerful counter-image to the scenes of looting and destruction. A number of bishops also stressed their solidarity with law enforcement officials who struggled to contain the disorder, as well as the owners of the roughly 3,000 damaged or looted businesses. What’s the background to the nationwide unrest that the French media calls “les violences du 17 octobre”? And what exactly are the bishops saying? Read all about it here. — A Polish bishop called for the firm defense of unborn children as well as compassion for their mothers this week, as the lower house of Poland’s parliament passed two bills seeking to liberalize the country’s abortion laws. The bill on decriminalizing assistance in an abortion passed by 217 votes to 213, while the abortion in cases of fetal abnormality bill passed by 233 to 203, thanks to the government’s majority in the lower house. Both bills will now move to the Polish Senate, the upper house of parliament, where the ruling coalition has a larger majority. The fetal abnormality bill is symbolically significant because if it became law, it would effectively overturn a 2020 ruling by Poland’s Constitutional Tribunal that a 1993 law permitting abortion for a severe and irreversible disability or a life-threatening incurable disease was unconstitutional. Read the whole story here. Subscribe **[The St. Paul Center App | Bible Study On-The-Go Read and understand the Bible with St. Paul Center’s new app! With today’s leading Catholic Scripture scholars as your guides, the St. Paul Center app empowers you to read the Bible](https://stpaulcenter.com/app?utm_source=pillar&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=applaunch)** from the heart of the Church. Download the app for free at either the Apple or the Google app stores. https://stpaulcenter.com/app That’s entertainment I have written before about my deep and sincere reservations about the celebrity exorcist subculture which has taken root in American Catholicism. And, because I am very ill at ease with the entire thing, I try to keep a weather eye on the phenomenon without being drawn into the kind of online back-and-forth which these figures sometimes generate. Earlier this week, JD noted that one such celebrity exorcist type, Fr. Chad Ripperger, has undertaken, on the request of his bishop, a year’s fast from interviews and public speaking. I’m sure that will be salutary for him, if for no other reason than that receiving with docility requests from one’s rightful ecclesiastical superiors always comes with graces. Then a second thing happened this week which caught my eye. Apparently, another fixture in the celebrity exorcist world, Fr. Carlos Martins, has initiated a lawsuit against two lay men — apparently associates of Rippenger, though I am unclear in what way, exactly — for allegedly defaming him and his ministry on a podcast. It seems the suit was initiated nearly a year ago and is now pending. At issue, I read, is that the two men described Martins on a podcast as “not who he says he is” with regard to his exorcism ministry and that he “doesn’t know what he’s talking about.” These statements Martins considers to be false and defamatory and, his suit claims, “directly affected the sale and reception of [his] The Exorcist Files book that was newly released at the time these episodes aired.” I don’t want to get too into the weeds of the details here, but a couple of things struck me about all this.

Oct 23 • 9:10 AM EDT • Entertainment • pillarcatholic.com

Elon Musk, Terafab Tax Breaks Take Center Stage In Texas Politics

A new lawsuit seeks access to correspondence between Texas Gov. Greg Abbott and Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk.

Oct 20 • 11:30 AM EDT • Politics • investors.com

'All of us have a role in prevention,' health official says as South Dakota suicide numbers rise

The number of South Dakotans who died by suicide increased to 214 in 2025, according to new state data.

Oct 21 • 6:08 PM EDT • Health • southdakotasearchlight.com

New district lines will test if Lodi can help U.S. Rep. Doris Matsui fend off upstart Mai Vang

California's newly redrawn 7th congressional district pits the veteran congresswoman against a Sacramento City Councilmember.

Oct 19 • 9:00 AM EDT • Politics • stocktonia.org

Disaster recovery efforts temporarily boosted health for some men, Northwestern study finds

New Northwestern University research aims to shed light on what drives inequalities among men in the aftermath of mega disasters. In such situations, men are often depicted as heroic leaders, and this study finds that many of them experience improved mental and physical health while assisting with recovery efforts. However, for some men, the boost is short lived once recovery activities are completed, leading to emotional lows and potentially increasing the risk of suicide.

Oct 23 • 10:32 AM EDT • Health • news.northwestern.edu

Disney stars Dylan and Cole Sprouse are ‘children of incest’

Dylan Sprouse revealed how he discovered that he and twin brother Cole Sprouse are ‘children of incest,’ due to a wild family history for the ‘Suite Life of Zack and Cody’ stars.

Oct 20 • 11:03 AM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com

Trump says he will close historic D.C. golf course for 15 months of renovations

A judge last week, however, ordered a halt to his redevelopment plans until at least Oct. 26 after scolding the government for starting a large-scale tree removal at the course over a holiday weekend while providing little notice to the court or the plaintiffs trying to stop the makeover.

Oct 18 • 12:46 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org

Jeff Garlin details ‘nervous breakdown,’ undiagnosed bipolar disorder while on “The Goldbergs”: ‘I was going to commit suicide’

Five years after his breakdown, Garlin said he is “just now feeling really good.”

Oct 21 • 4:02 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com

Trump Says Renovations on Disputed DC Golf Course Will Begin Immediately

A federal judge has ordered tree cutting halted at the city course as she considers a lawsuit over the legality of the administration’s plans.

Oct 19 • 10:09 AM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com

Glendale store owner sues federal government over cash, computers seized in raid 20 months ago

A Glendale convenience store owner filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday demanding the return of cash, computers and phones agents seized from his money services business in February 2025.

Oct 20 • 8:56 PM EDT • Business • abc15.com

Obama says Trump officials’ pursuit of Rep. Omar should ‘outrage all Americans’

In a statement Sunday, the former president said the administration is targeting the Minnesota Democrat based on her political beliefs.

Oct 18 • 2:55 PM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com

This Week: Politics 101, 20th Street Bikeway, Muni Trivia

Here is a list of events this week. Monday/Tonight! SF Politics 101 with Joel Engardio. Learn how local politics shaped San Francisco. Monday/tonight, October 19, 5:30-6:45 p.m. SPUR Urban Center, 654 Mission Street, S.F. Wednesday 20th Street Protected Bikeway Ribbon Cutting. The Oakland Department of Transportation, city officials, Bike East Bay and other community partners will celebrate the completion of the 19th Street BART to Lake Merritt Urban Greenway. Wednesday, October 21, 1:30 p.m. 400 Thomas L Berkley Way, Oakland. Thursday 2026 Silver SPUR Awards. This SPUR event brings together elected officials and business, civic, and philanthropic leaders to celebrate four individuals and their contributions. Thursday, October 22, 4-7:30 p.m. Blue Shield of California Theater at YBCA, 700 Howard Street, S.F. Get tickets here. Friday Woman and Non-Binary Morning Ride. Join the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition for a socially distanced bike ride for women and nonbinary cyclists. Friday, October 23, 7:15-8:45 a.m. McLaren Lodge, 501 Stanyan Street, S.F. Friday Muni Trivia Night. Bring your friends or come solo and make some new ones. Friday, October 23, 7:30 p.m. Standard Deviant Brewing, Pier 70, suite 195, 1070 Maryland Street, S.F. RSVP here. Saturday Fifth Annual Firefighter Family Ride. Join SFFD, SF Safe Routes to School, and the SF Bicycle Coalition for a fun, low-stress bike ride through one of the city’s most beautiful routes. Saturday, October 24, 10:30 a.m.-1 p.m. Panhandle Park Blacktop (Fell & Ashbury) to JFK Promenade (Whale’s Tail). Sunday Canvas for No on Prop G. Join the San Francisco Bicycle Coalition to canvas for No on ‘G’ to save Sunset Dunes Park. Sunday, October 25, 10 a.m.-12 p.m. Marina Blvd & Laguna Street, S.F. Got an event we should know about? Drop us a line.

Oct 19 • 11:38 AM EDT • Politics • sf.streetsblog.org

Zach Charbonnet Injury Update: Seahawks RB’s Week 7 Status Revealed

Zach Charbonnet was supposed to be the leader of the Seattle Seahawks backfield in 2026, but the veteran running back has yet to suit up thanks to an ACL injury he suffered during the team's Super Bowl run last season. Originally selected in the second round of the 2023 NFL Draft, the UCLA product spent …

Oct 22 • 6:38 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Man killed during attempted robbery at east Las Vegas business identified; three suspects sought

According to the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department, three men entered a second-floor business suite intending to commit a robbery when the employee was shot.

Oct 16 • 11:05 PM EDT • Business • ktnv.com

Jefferson County Health Department Pays $2.25M to Settle Data Breach Lawsuit

Jefferson County Health Department, a public health agency for Jefferson County in Hillsboro, Missouri, has agreed to settle class action litigation that Jefferson County Health Department in Missouri has agreed to pay $2.25 million to settle a class action lawsuit stemming from a 2022 data breach affecting almost 116,000 individuals.

Oct 21 • 12:35 PM EDT • Health • hipaajournal.com

Why this Glendale business owner is suing the U.S. government

Mario Ayala said he is trying to keep the business running, but the uncertainty and damage from the raid has taken a toll. Zach Prelutsky reports.

Oct 21 • 12:50 AM EDT • Business • azfamily.com

Addressing cascading mountain hazards requires scientific cooperation across borders

Editor's note: The devastating glacier collapse and ensuing debris flow near the China-Nepal border in August underscored the need for stronger cross-border cooperation in addressing mountain hazards. Against this backdrop, the Global Partnership for

Oct 19 • 5:04 AM EDT • Science • news.cgtn.com

Glendale Small Business Files Federal Lawsuit Challenging Seizure of Money by Federal Agents During Raid

PHOENIX—Today, the owner of a Glendale money services business (MSB) teamed up with the Institute for Justice (IJ) to file a federal lawsuit after his […]

Oct 20 • 12:08 PM EDT • Business • ij.org

Supreme Court Declines to Hear Los Angeles Business Owner’s Case Seeking Compensation After SWAT Team Destroyed Shop

WASHINGTON—Today, the United States Supreme Court declined to hear a Los Angeles small business owner’s lawsuit seeking compensation after a SWAT team destroyed his print […]

Oct 19 • 11:08 AM EDT • Business • ij.org

Expedia accused of inflating hotel prices in new lawsuit

Struggling to afford hotel prices? A new lawsuit alleges Expedia is jacking up costs across the board. A proposed class-action lawsuit filed on Oct. 2 in the U.S. District Court

Oct 16 • 1:55 PM EDT • Entertainment • thederrick.com

Calipatria mental health team hosts game for population

Mental health staff at Calipatria State Prison hosted a game for the population as part of Suicide Prevention Month.

Oct 20 • 11:17 AM EDT • Health • cdcr.ca.gov

Late artist Lil Poppa’s mother launches foundation focused on youth mental health

The mother of Jacksonville late recording artist Lil Poppa is honoring her son’s life by creating a foundation focused on mental health awareness, suicide prevention and youth support.

Oct 16 • 10:08 PM EDT • Health • yahoo.com

Lawsuit accuses Trump of illegally profiting from UAE crypto investments

The lawsuit claims the investments violate the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause

Oct 22 • 2:12 PM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com

Carrot Top breaks silence 1 month after reported suicide attempt: ‘Thank you for being there for me’

The prop comedian also revealed when he will make his return to the Las Vegas Strip to continue his residency at Luxor Hotel & Casino.

Oct 18 • 11:17 AM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com

Orange County Public Schools rejects salary and health insurance recommendations

OCPS said declining enrollment and what it described as insufficient state funding have put additional pressure on its budget

Oct 20 • 4:01 PM EDT • Health • wftv.com

How a Legal Backlash Against Big Tech Is Forcing Big Changes

A series of lawsuits has created a new de facto regulatory regime as courts order companies like Meta and Google to change their business practices — and pay up.

Oct 22 • 9:53 AM EDT • Business • nytimes.com

Couple embezzled millions from large Portland business to fund trips to Vegas and Legoland, lawsuit says

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — One of Portland’s largest employers has filed a lawsuit against one of its workers. Daimler Trucks North America is seeking more than $6.5 million in damages from Terry Watson,...

Oct 19 • 8:29 PM EDT • Business • yahoo.com

Beloved Yankees Player Lands Job Managing His Former Japanese Team

Former New York Yankees star Hideki Matsui landed a job managing the Yomiuri Giants, his former team. The post Beloved Yankees Player Lands Job Managing His Former Japanese Team appeared first on HEAVY.

Oct 23 • 1:34 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Why this Glendale business owner is suing the U.S. government

Mario Ayala said he is trying to keep the business running, but the uncertainty and damage from the raid has taken a toll. Zach Prelutsky reports.

Oct 21 • 12:50 AM EDT • Business • wdbj7.com

Cubs Listed As Potential Suitor For Tarik Skubal

Oct 22 • 9:35 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

On fire, Désiré Doué's incredible October stats 🔥

October suits him.This Tuesday evening, Paris Saint-Germain host FC Barcelona in the blockbuster clash on matchday three of the 2026-2027 Champions League league phase.The Parisians opened the scoring...

Oct 20 • 3:57 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

How The New York Times Reports on A.I. Images

A Times reporter and editors discuss the challenges of sifting through what’s real and what’s not in pursuit of the news.

Oct 21 • 9:21 AM EDT • Technology • nytimes.com

Amazon employee files explosive lawsuit claiming senior executive raped her on NYC business trip

Oct 21 • 6:37 PM EDT • Business • nypost.com

Wynonna Judd says mother Naomi foreshadowed her suicide: ‘She talked about it a lot’

Country music star Naomi Judd died in 2022.

Oct 22 • 12:49 AM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com

Carrot Top shares positive message after reported suicide attempt, plans return to stage

Comedian Carrot Top recently broke his month-long silence to share a positive message following his reported suicide attempt. The Las Vegas-based performer, whose real name is Scott Thompson, was h…

Oct 18 • 7:33 PM EDT • Entertainment • ktla.com

Most Catholic health institutions in Illinois temporarily protected from assisted suicide law

A significant number of Catholic health workers in Illinois are now covered by a temporary restraining order on the state's new physician assisted suicide law that took effect Sept. 12.

Oct 22 • 4:50 PM EDT • Health • osvnews.com

Pat Freiermuth could play in Week 6

Pat Freiermuth could suit up in Week 6 despite calf injury

Oct 18 • 9:28 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Nashville CARES sues TN Health over HIV care restrictions

A Middle Tennessee HIV care center is suing the Tennessee Department of Health over new rules that require proof of citizenship to access services.

Oct 20 • 7:02 AM EDT • Health • nashvillebanner.com

25 Shortfalls Cruise Entertainment Teams See on Formal Evenings Among Guests on Almost Every Voyage

Formal night is supposed to be the glamorous peak of a cruise: gowns on the staircase, blazers at the bar, photographers waiting under a chandelier. Then the lobby fills up, and the same slip-ups show up sail after sail. A bathing suit at the dining room door. A perfect gown with beach flip-flops peeking out ...

Oct 21 • 6:59 AM EDT • Entertainment • travel.yahoo.com

Florida GOP pulls lawsuit over TV ad tying Uthmeier to Hope Florida scandal

The GOP claimed its lawsuit achieved its aim because Democrats pulled the ad, but the ad ran its scheduled run, and Democrats this week launched a new online ad on the same topic.

Oct 21 • 6:21 PM EDT • Politics • orlandosentinel.com

Why this Glendale business owner is suing the U.S. government

Mario Ayala said he is trying to keep the business running, but the uncertainty and damage from the raid has taken a toll. Zach Prelutsky reports.

Oct 21 • 12:50 AM EDT • Business • 1011now.com

Mastercard Selects Extend as Financial Operations Platform

Deal said to bring ‘modern spend and expense management’ to issuing banks

Oct 21 • 8:48 AM EDT • Business • businesstravelexecutive.com

Atrium and State Health Plan are clashing over NC benefits. Get up to speed.

A tiered network fight escalated into a lawsuit and an out-of-network move — all while 750,000 members were trying to pick a plan.

Oct 22 • 7:00 AM EDT • Health • newsobserver.com

Justice Department asks appeals court to intervene in California ballot case

WASHINGTON, Oct 22 (Reuters) - The US Justice Department asked an appeals court to intervene on Thursday in its lawsuit seeking to temporarily block California from counting more than 20,000

Oct 22 • 8:19 PM EDT • Politics • centraloregondaily.com

A.J. Browns good to go for Week 7

The Patriots' top receiver will suit up in Week 7.

Oct 21 • 3:35 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Pulpit Politics: Johnson Amendment Rarely Enforced

Oklahoma religious leaders are navigating a murky legal landscape around the Johnson Amendment, which bars tax-exempt churches from endorsing candidates but is rarely enforced. With a recent Texas lawsuit failing and Congress considering changes, some pastors endorse candidates without consequences while others see political neutrality as a theological obligation, not just a legal one.

Oct 21 • 7:00 AM EDT • Politics • oklahomawatch.org

Couple embezzled millions from large Portland business to fund trips to Vegas and Legoland, lawsuit says

PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) — One of Portland’s largest employers has filed a lawsuit against one of its workers. Daimler Trucks North America is seeking more than $6.5 million in damages from Terr…

Oct 19 • 8:29 PM EDT • Business • koin.com

Vaisala Viewlinc Cloud Suite supports life science innovation from laboratory to regulated operations

Vaisala Viewlinc Cloud Suite Vaisala Viewlinc Cloud Suite and Care for Viewlinc enable professional-quality monitoring as critical operations evolve. Vaisala, a global leader in measurement instruments and intelligence, introduces Viewlinc Cloud Suite, a cloud-based environmental monitoring offering designed to help organizations establish professional-quality monitoring from day one and build on the same platform as their requirements evolve. The launch is complemented by Vaisala Care for Viewl

Oct 22 • 4:00 AM EDT • Science • finance.yahoo.com

Lawsuit accuses Trump of illegally profiting from UAE crypto investments

The lawsuit claims the investments violate the Constitution’s foreign emoluments clause

Oct 22 • 2:45 PM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com

Judge insists Trump must be deposed in his $10B lawsuit against the BBC, warns it could be tossed in fight over records

A federal judge warned President Donald Trump could see his $10 billion defamation lawsuit against the BBC dismissed if he does not work harder to produce information the news outlet it is entitled to in the case, including sitting for a deposition.

Oct 22 • 1:08 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com

Eagles Named Potential Suitor for Former NCAA Passing Yards Leader

Oct 21 • 8:34 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Republicans sue, claim it’s a crime for stations to air Democrats’ Hope Florida ad

The Florida GOP’s lawsuit leans on an appeals court ruling that a leaked grand jury report should be expunged from the record.

Oct 19 • 10:47 AM EDT • Politics • miamiherald.com

Feds claim 17,000 other potential noncitizen voters in California

Filings in the Justice Department's lawsuit accusing California officials of facilitating election fraud reveal new details about the underlying investigations.

Oct 20 • 7:39 PM EDT • Politics • latimes.com

Man arrested, dirt bike rider wanted after theft from Monroe County business leading to pursuit

Oct 20 • 11:24 PM EDT • Business • clickondetroit.com

Pat Daley, a political freshman focused on affordability, Medicaid expansion and infrastructure

Pat Daley is running against longtime incumbent Jesse Petrea for a seat in the Georgia House of Representatives representing Chatham and Bryan counties.

Oct 19 • 6:39 PM EDT • Politics • wtoc.com

Carrot Top returns to Vegas stage with dark jokes 1 month after suicide attempt

Carrot Top was met with love, cheers, and a standing ovation while returning to his Las Vegas residency one month after his sudden hospitalization.

Oct 20 • 11:56 AM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com

Addressing mental health proactively for our loved ones

As suicide and mental health concerns continue to impact families and communities, an Atlanta-based mindset expert, Michelle Bryant Johnson, shares how to recognize warning signs, support someone in crisis and navigate grief after devastating loss. You can learn more about SPARK at https://www.michellebryantjohnson.com/spark1000

Oct 17 • 11:24 AM EDT • Health • fox5atlanta.com

Toppenish School District receives $7.5 million federal grant to expand mental health services for students

The BriefThe Toppenish School District has been awarded up to $7.5 million through Project AWARE (Advancing Wellness and Resiliency in Education), a federal grant administered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA).The grant will provide up to $1.5 million annually over five years to expand mental health services, strengthen substance use prevention and intervention, and improve access to support for students.District officials say the funding will help address identified gaps in services, particularly drug and alcohol counseling at the high school level, and will allow the district to build capacity for long-term mental health support.TOPPENISH, WASHINGTON — The Toppenish School District has been awarded up to $7.5 million through Project AWARE (Advancing Wellness and Resiliency in Education), a federal grant administered by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA), to expand mental health services and substance use prevention for students.District officials said access to mental health resources has been limited, making it difficult for some students and families to get the support they need. The federal Project AWARE grant will help address those challenges by bringing schools and local healthcare providers together to better support students.The grant will provide up to $1.5 million annually over five years to expand mental health services, strengthen substance use prevention and intervention, and improve access to support for Toppenish students. Deputy Superintendent Dr. Jeff Camero said the district is focused on coordinating with service providers in the area to work as a unified team."We made the awareness with the grant. But looking at all the service providers in the area and how can we all together work as a team?" Camero said.Camero said the district wants to use those resources to reach students earlier and provide more support for those struggling with their mental health. The district plans to address a range of mental health challenges, from anxiety and depression to youth suicide risk. Camero emphasized the importance of supporting students in grades eight through twelve, where suicide rates are a particular concern."Making sure from anxiety to depression, making sure that we can help support our students at those levels, but also the youth suicide risk, looking at that as a top in this area, in our grades, you know, eight, for example, eight through 12, looking at suicide rate and looking at how whether we look at the ACES or whatever program we're looking at, that's federal, how that connects and how we can better serve our students with this extra funding," Camero said.The funding will allow the district to bring in additional staff, including mental health and substance use specialists, to work directly with students and connect families with community resources. The district is already posting positions, including a director role, with additional positions expected to follow.District officials are also thinking beyond the grant's five-year timeline. Brittany Kaple, Director of Public Relations for the Toppenish School District, said the intent is to build capacity and establish connections that will sustain mental health services even after the grant funding ends."We do have the director position already posted, with some of our other positions following really close behind that. But the intent is to, you know, it's a five-year grant, so those positions would be funded for that five years. But there's also the intent to build capacity and make those connections so that at the end of the grant, when that money, you know, if that money is not renewed," Kaple said.As student mental health needs continue to evolve, access to drug and alcohol counseling has become an important priority for the district. Kaple said teachers and staff have been raising concerns about the need for more support, especially at the high school level."And that was something that was also an identified need by our high school staff when the superintendent met with them last school year. They said that that was a really great need, something that they felt was a gap in services that we were providing for our students. And so this is going to be one way to help support that need," Kaple said.The Toppenish School District says its goal is to ensure students and families have access to the support they need, both now and in the years ahead. Additional positions, including drug and alcohol counselors and family engagement specialists, are expected to be posted in the coming weeks. News Sunnyside City Council navigates 2027 budget planning Monique Garcia News "Dancing with the Stars" champion J.R. Martinez shares message of resilience during Central Washington visit Tyler Wargo News Toppenish, Mattawa educators honored at state Educator of the Year Awards Erin Wencl News Kennewick educator named 2027 Washington Teacher of the Year Erin Wencl News Voters to decide the next Yakima County Sheriff Monique Garcia ​COPYRIGHT 2026 BY APPLE VALLEY NEWS NOW. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. THIS MATERIAL MAY NOT BE PUBLISHED, BROADCAST, REWRITTEN OR REDISTRIBUTED.

Oct 19 • 7:59 PM EDT • Health • applevalleynewsnow.com

‘Of course’ Vinicius agent explains he was tempted by Arsenal

Michael Yormark says Arsenal were “very aggressive” in their pursuit, and has now explained how seriously the Real Madrid winger viewed the approach.Photo by Tullio M. Puglia/Getty ImagesVinícius...

Oct 22 • 7:05 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Engling plans to sue Bayh for defamation in secretary of state race over 'reckless' claim

After the Bayh campaign rebuffed Engling's call to retract and correct a campaign attack ad, the Republican says he's filing a defamation lawsuit.

Oct 20 • 10:57 AM EDT • Politics • indystar.com

Spurs' De'Aaron Fox questions fall by Thunder's Chet Holmgren

The entanglement and ensuing dust-up on Tuesday night resulted in a flagrant 1 foul for Fox and three technicals fouls for Oklahoma City.

Oct 21 • 4:18 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Carrot Top breaks silence weeks after reported suicide attempt

Carrot Top has broken his silence nearly a month after reports that he attempted suicide.

Oct 17 • 3:58 PM EDT • Entertainment • centraloregondaily.com

Tarik Skubal Rumors: Toronto Blue Jays Listed as Potential Suitor

Skubal is going to hit free agency this winter with a lot of questions around him.

Oct 22 • 3:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Catawba Valley Health System opens Taylorsville Urgent Care

Catawba Valley Health System (CVHS) is pleased to announce the opening of Catawba Urgent Care of Mountain View in Taylorsville, effective Monday, October 19, 2026. Located at 50 Macedonia Church Road, Suite C, the new clinic becomes the fifth Catawba Urgent Care of Mountain View location. The Taylorsville location joins existing clinics in Sherrills Ford,…

Oct 21 • 12:44 PM EDT • Health • taylorsvilletimes.com

Gravity & Other Myths Bringing Acrobatics Show to Eisenhower Auditorium

An Australian physical theater troupe will bring a performance built around acrobatics, repetition and the pursuit of mastery to Penn State next

Oct 20 • 5:48 PM EDT • Entertainment • statecollege.com

New Israeli fund seeks $40 million to invest in mental health and longevity

Founded by Esther Barak Landes and Adi Ostry Matalon, Alma will back technologies spanning mental health, suicide prevention, digital therapeutics, brain health and dementia. Sheba Medical Center will serve as its strategic partner.

Oct 19 • 7:11 AM EDT • Health • calcalistech.com

After 40 Years, Chornobyl's Radioactive Particles Are Surprisingly Stable

Not as bad as we feared.

Oct 16 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • sciencealert.com

A 'battle of the ages' in a California House race: Matsui, 82, faces a 41-year-old challenger

Rep. Doris Matsui fights for her political life in her first competitive reelection challenge from Sacramento City Council member Mai Vang

Oct 23 • 8:00 AM EDT • Politics • calmatters.org

Lena Waithe says Hollywood feels like "Walmart"

Actor, writer and producer Lena Waithe is questioning Hollywood's pursuit of mass-market entertainment as consolidation leaves creators with fewer places to sell original projects.

Oct 20 • 6:22 PM EDT • Entertainment • yahoo.com

Michigan Democrat confirms sister-in-law's terror watchlist lawsuit days before Obama campaign appearance

Abdul El-Sayed acknowledged his sister-in-law's involvement in a federal terrorist watchlist lawsuit, days before former President Barack Obama campaigns with him.

Oct 17 • 10:33 PM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com

Costco’s ‘100% agave’ tequila lawsuit thrown out

A judge, deferring to Mexico's authority over tequila regulation, dismissed a proposed class-action lawsuit claiming that Costco’s Kirkland tequilas labeled 100% agave" are mixed with low-grade booze. The law firm

Oct 19 • 8:45 PM EDT • Entertainment • thederrick.com

WA Department of Social and Health Services eyes cuts, modernization for 2027

Washington’s largest state agency is preparing for a difficult 2027 budget by pursuing two strategies at once: pulling back where it can while trying to modernize how it delivers services.

Oct 19 • 7:00 AM EDT • Health • yahoo.com

Voter roll fight in California ramps up weeks before election

First Assistant U.S. Attorney Bill Essayli defended the Trump administration's lawsuit against California election officials, alleging that 20,000 non-citizens who are documented immigrants are registered to vote and have received mail-in ballots, just weeks before the upcoming election.

Oct 18 • 11:25 AM EDT • Politics • kcra.com

Decatur meatpacking business provides food for those in need amid rising costs nationwide

Heinkel's meat packing provides Northeast Community Fund in Decatur with 16,500 pounds of smoked turkey legs to feed the areas hungry.

Oct 19 • 7:44 PM EDT • Business • wandtv.com

Headway Issues, Then Retracts New Clinician Contracts After Backlash

Therapist enablement platform Headway is once again facing backlash from its clinician pool on its platform over a lengthy new contract the company rolled

Oct 19 • 4:50 PM EDT • Business • bhbusiness.com

UConn's Azzi Fudd will appear in Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue

The Dallas Wings rookie joins 10 other women for a shoot in Spain, with stops in Ibiza and Mallorca.

Oct 21 • 4:44 PM EDT • Sports • ctinsider.com

Memorial honors North Kingstown officer as family encourages mental health conversations

A new memorial honors a North Kingstown police officer who died by suicide months after joining the department.

Oct 16 • 6:00 PM EDT • Health • turnto10.com

Suns Learned Some Important Lessons Before Games Start Counting

From Jalen Green’s potential stardom to lingering turnover troubles, discover which tactical adjustments and roster developments will define Phoenix’s pursuit of a title this regular season.

Oct 19 • 10:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com

Top Democrats join California immigrant, Nevada group to sue over federal election probes

The lawsuit accuses Trump and his administration of using “shoddily compiled lists of supposed noncitizens” and “coercive threats" against state officials to assert federal control over the midterms.

Oct 21 • 1:18 PM EDT • Politics • latimes.com

Discrimination Fuels Mental Health Crisis Among LGBTQ+ Youth, National Report Finds

By Dennis Thompson HealthDay ReporterTHURSDAY, Oct. 22, 2026 (HealthDay News) — LGBTQ+ youth continue to face high rates of anxiety, depression and suicidal thoughts, driven by ongoing discrimination, a new report says. However, acceptance and access to care can reduce the risk of mental health ...

Oct 22 • 6:15 AM EDT • Health • usnews.com

California Attorney General Rob Bonta on DOJ voter rolls lawsuit

The midterm elections are less than two weeks away

Oct 21 • 3:10 PM EDT • Politics • spectrumnews1.com

Carrot Top speaks out for the first time following suicide attempt

Comedian Carrot Top is breaking his silence, nearly a month after he was hospitalized following a suicide attempt.

Oct 18 • 4:51 PM EDT • Entertainment • nbcconnecticut.com

Apple Pulls Keynote, Pages and Numbers From App Store

Apple has temporarily removed Keynote, Pages, and Numbers from the App Store, just after releasing an update that added iPhone Duo support and a new Intelligent Assistant. It is not clear if the apps were removed intentionally, or if it is a bug. It is not clear if the apps were removed intentionally, or if it is a bug.

Oct 22 • 2:01 PM EDT • Technology • macrumors.com

Video: How Title IX Became a Political Tool

After a Cornell student’s lawsuit alleging the school failed her when she reported sexual assault, there’s a new focus on Title IX, the federal law barring sex discrimination in federally funded education. Our Washington correspondent Michael C. Bender traces how interpretations of the law shifted between the Obama and Trump administrations.

Oct 21 • 3:06 PM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com

Lakers' Austin Reaves gets real on what it is like seeing LeBron James suit up for 76ers

For the first time in Austin Reaves career he will be without LeBron James. The guard commented on what it's like with James playing for another team.

Oct 21 • 12:02 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com