Chicago Public Schools is $27 million over budget just months into the school year, raising the risk of midyear cuts. Rehired staff could be laid off again Dec. 1 if unapproved state aid and city funding fail to arrive.

Abdul El-Sayed, Michigan’s Senate-election winner and the first Muslim American elected to the chamber, backs Trump’s plan to cut military grants to Israel. He wants Washington to condition arms aid on respect for international law and redirect funds to domestic needs.

A superintendent who once struggled with undiagnosed dyslexia is leading Providence’s literacy turnaround, with third-grade reading proficiency rising each year since 2021. The gains remain modest—24% of third graders met the mark in 2024–25—but several schools are outperforming expectations.

OpenAI and Databricks are expanding their partnership to bring AI tools into governed enterprise data, letting workers ask questions, build agents and act on company-specific insights. Integrations connect ChatGPT and Codex to Databricks while preserving access controls, audit logs and spending oversight.

Google says Gemini agents are advancing research by dividing complex work among specialists and checking results with tools. Highlights include a formal proof of the Courtade–Kumar conjecture, plus gains in Go, chemistry and computing systems.

A new benchmark finds AI agents can rank unseen experimental outcomes better than chance on many tasks—but results vary by field and system. Its authors caution that scores are correlations, not proof of reliable predictions or a replacement for lab validation.

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei estimates AI coding tools are a $34 billion annual market, with Claude Code and OpenAI Codex together capturing about 70%. AI now generates most code at Anthropic, while routine coding work and entry-level hiring decline.

Enterprise AI is reaching production faster than companies can test or govern it: just 15% use purpose-built AI testing, while 37% lack a named quality owner. A QualiZeal-HFS study urges clearer accountability and funding for “trust engineering.”

A former Justice Department lawyer says university civil-rights probes were steered toward punishment, not evidence, and funding threats pressured schools into deals. Her whistle-blower complaint alleges weak cases and risks to free speech.

North Carolina Republicans return for a final session before Democrats take control of the House in January, with veto overrides and budget decisions on the table. A limited agenda—and calls for restraint—could curb last-minute partisan moves.