As smartphone designs have become more refined, they've also become less repairable. Fairphone bucks that trend, offering devices that can be fully disassembled and serviced using a single screwdriver. But its devices were a pain to get in the US until now.

The Dutch company has launched the Fairphone Gen 6+ in the US, offering not only the phone but a full line of accessories and replacement parts so you can keep your phone running for years. And yes, the battery is removable.

Don't expect the Fairphone Gen 6+ to blow you away in the spec department—it focuses on being repairable and paying workers a fair wage. Half of the phone is made from recycled materials, and it has a microSD card slot. How retro.

The Fairphone Gen 6+ is not an entirely new phone, but it is slightly upgraded from the regular Fairphone 6. The processor is slightly more powerful, with a Snapdragon 7s Gen 4 processor replacing the Gen 3 in the last phone. The RAM has also been increased from 8GB to 12GB, a rarity during our current global RAM shortage. Fairphone also offers the device in a new "Cobalt Blue" color, which is a reference to the company's efforts to support ethical cobalt mining in Africa.

It's been possible to buy Fairphones in the US before, but they were imported through other companies. The non-plus Fairphone 6 was offered through a company called Murena, which sold it for a higher price and loaded the phone with its de-Googled /e/OS. The new phone runs a standard build of Android 16 with all the usual Google services, and the company promises seven years of update support.

There are 12 user-replaceable components in the Fairphone. Credit: Fairphone

The power of the Fairphone is its modular design. With other phones, even something simple like replacing an aging battery often requires melting adhesive, prying apart fragile glass panels, and decoupling cables. The Fairphone Gen 6+ has two screws on the back to open the rear panel, providing access to the internals. As a result, the phone is only IP55 rated—safe from splashes but not full submersion.

With a single T5 torx driver, you can replace the battery, cameras, USB-C port, display, and more. In all, there are 12 components available for purchase, from the $8 SIM card tray to the $90 OLED screen assembly. Fairphone also sells a few accessories, including a case, a lanyard, and alternative back panels with a card holder or a finger loop.

The Fairphone Gen 6+ is fully unlocked with support for T-Mobile and AT&T in the US. It's available directly from Fairphone, and it will be on sale on Amazon soon as well.

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The federal agency tasked with studying ways to improve America's outstandingly poor healthcare system is "on the brink," experts warn. The Trump administration has cut its staff by 75 percent, canceled its grants en masse, and is refusing to spend tens of millions of dollars appropriated by Congress.

Whether the agency "will survive the second Trump administration is an open question," health policy experts Aaron Carroll and David Atkins wrote in an opinion piece published today in the Annals of Internal Medicine.

The agency in question is the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), which has focused on ways to improve patient safety, healthcare quality, care delivery, and new technologies and practices since the 1990s. In the past, "Republican leaders recognized that health care disparities were fundamental quality problems," Carroll and Atkins wrote. But recently, disparities in care have become partisan issues.

During Trump's second term, DOGE cuts led to the firing or retirement of an estimated 75 percent of the AHRQ's staff. In July, AHRQ abruptly sent grant cancellation letters to around 150 researchers. More than 100 research grants collectively worth over $250 million have been canceled. Although Congress appropriated $345 million for the 2026 fiscal year, much of it has gone unspent, with only $15 million going to grants so far. As such, scientists across over 30 states have halted research, laid off staff, shut down programs, and stopped pursuing new lines of research.

"Profound concern"

In addition to the losses in data and research findings, Carroll and Atkins lament the loss to the scientific community. "This is what it looks like when we stop developing the next generation of health services researchers." Reversing the damage is doable, but will be difficult, they write, while calling on Congress to act.

Last week, 30 Democratic senators sent a fiery letter to anti-vaccine Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. Noting the same series of events as Carroll and Atkins, they called Kennedy's handling of AHRQ "sabotage" and an "outrageous abuse of administrative power that will leave Americans sicker, poorer, and dying from preventable causes."

They highlighted just a few of the research programs that were axed under Kennedy, including studies on training rural healthcare workers to handle maternal medical emergencies in Connecticut, improving access to home dialysis in New York, reducing risks of patient falls in rural hospitals in Colorado, reducing overuse of antibiotics in Utah, improving autism screening and care for Black children in North Carolina, and improving chronic pain management to reduce reliance on opioids in Virginia. The senators also noted that grants were canceled out of the blue with form letters, which had contradictory explanations and incorrect citations.

With "profound concern and unequivocal opposition" to the mass grant cancellations, the senators wrote, "We demand that you immediately rescind these cancellations and ensure that the funding Congress appropriates to AHRQ is invested in health research in accordance with the law."

"We want to be clear: Democrats and Republicans did not work together to appropriate funds for AHRQ as a gentle suggestion for the [health] Department to follow at their discretion or leisure," they wrote. "We provided this money with the explicit instruction that the Department faithfully support life-saving research to improve access and health outcomes for Americans."

The health department under Kennedy has previously defended the cuts. The senators gave Kennedy until August 25 to respond to their letter.

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Disney today sued the Federal Communications Commission and FCC Chairman Brendan Carr in a lawsuit that aims to stop what it called a "campaign of censorship" waged by the Trump administration against ABC.

Disney, ABC, and the eight broadcast stations they own filed a complaint in US District Court for the District of Columbia. They also submitted a motion for a temporary restraining order and preliminary injunction that would halt the FCC proceeding in which Carr is threatening to deny renewals of broadcast licenses held by ABC stations.

The lawsuit accused the FCC of violating the First Amendment by retaliating against the company's protected expression. "Again and again, the Administration has attacked ABC’s speech—the stories its journalists report and the viewpoints its network programs air," the lawsuit said. "Over time, those attacks have escalated into express demands that ABC be stripped of its broadcast licenses because of its speech."

The lawsuit asked the court to halt any further actions in the early license review that Carr ordered for all eight ABC stations. In particular, it asked the court to prevent the FCC from issuing a Hearing Designation Order that would all but guarantee a negative outcome for the ABC stations.

FCC left Disney "no choice"

While ABC station licenses are scheduled for renewals between 2028 and 2031, Carr took the highly unusual step of ordering the stations to file renewal applications several years early. Revoking a license in the middle of a term has been described as somewhere between difficult and effectively impossible.

Despite the legal difficulty of revoking a license, Disney's lawsuit said the FCC could use a hearing "to deny license renewal or immediately revoke the Stations’ licenses, forcing Plaintiffs off the air entirely, as the President has repeatedly demanded." Even if the FCC doesn't go that far, it can "mir[e] ABC in years of costly litigation, with the threat of adverse action ever present and with every editorial judgment shadowed by the prospect of provoking the Administration into further retaliation," the lawsuit said.

"Facing this existential threat, Plaintiffs have no choice but to seek redress from the judicial branch for the Administration’s blatant retaliation for their First Amendment speech," the lawsuit said. "Plaintiffs come to this Court reluctantly with no alternative means to eliminate these ongoing and immediate threats other than total capitulation to the Administration’s demands."

Carr ordered the review of ABC’s broadcast licenses in April, one day after Trump and the first lady called on ABC to fire Jimmy Kimmel over a joke in which he said Melania Trump looked like an “expectant widow.” The Carr FCC claims the license review is necessary because ABC's diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) practices may violate anti-discrimination rules.

The Carr-led FCC today accused Disney of spreading disinformation.

"All broadcasters have a legal obligation to operate in the public interest—even Disney," an FCC spokesperson said in a statement provided to Ars. "The FCC has been examining claims that Disney engaged in illegal DEI discrimination for over a year. Disney is obviously very concerned about the FCC’s proceeding, as evidenced by their ongoing campaign of disinformation as well as their decision to ask a court to stop the FCC from further pursuing matters. The FCC will continue to follow the facts and law wherever they lead."

FCC Democrat roots Disney on

In addition to Carr, Disney's lawsuit names the other FCC commissioners as defendants. That includes Democrat Anna Gomez, though Gomez has consistently fought Carr's attacks on ABC and spoke out in support of Disney's lawsuit. Disney even cited some of Gomez's comments to support its argument about the Trump administration.

“For months, the FCC has waged a campaign of censorship and control against Disney’s ABC stations, using the threat of broadcast license revocations to punish a company for speech this administration doesn’t like," Gomez said in a statement today. "I have long called on companies to push back against this kind of government intimidation, and I’m glad Disney has shown courage and stepped up. This should be a welcome sign for every broadcaster who has felt the weight of this overreaching government pressure in silence."

The Disney lawsuit gives a history of the Trump administration's attacks on ABC. It notes that after the 2024 presidential election debate hosted by ABC, Trump accused ABC moderators of bias and repeatedly called for ABC to lose broadcast licenses. After winning the election, Trump chose Carr to take the FCC chairmanship and Carr "has likewise agreed with the President that the FCC should pursue grave remedies such as revocation when it disapproves of networks’ speech," the lawsuit said.

The lawsuit describes the November 2025 incident in which ABC News Chief White House Correspondent Mary Bruce asked Trump why he was waiting for Congress to release the Epstein files instead of doing it himself immediately.

Trump responded, "You’re a terrible person, and a terrible reporter... I think the license should be taken away from ABC because your news is so fake, and it’s so wrong, and we have a great commissioner, a chairman, who should look at that. Because I think when you come in and when you’re 97 percent negative to Trump, and then Trump wins the election by a landslide, that means obviously your news is not credible, and you’re not credible as a reporter."

White House called ABC "a Democrat spin operation"

The White House issued a press release the next day stating that "ABC 'News' is not journalism—it’s a Democrat spin operation masquerading as a broadcast network." Carr had already threatened ABC station licenses in September 2025, saying that stations could be guilty of "news distortion" and face "fines or license revocations" if they continued to air Jimmy Kimmel's show.

In addition to the early license review, Carr opened a proceeding in May 2026 to examine whether ABC's The View should continue to be exempt from the equal-time rule as a “bona fide news interview program.” The FCC had been investigating the ABC show since at least February, when it aired an interview with Texas Democratic Senate candidate James Talarico.

In July, the FCC demanded that the Houston-based KTRK station "produce all internal communications among The View’s booking staff, its segment producers, its Executive Producer, and its on-air co-hosts discussing any candidate over a two-year period, together with the messages that two named cohosts had sent to the program’s Executive Producer about a single booking decision," the lawsuit said.

The FCC letter of inquiry also "demanded that ABC disclose the political donations of individual employees and co-hosts," the lawsuit said. Two weeks later, the FCC issued another letter making similar demands for Good Morning America, This Week with George Stephanopoulos, and ABC World News Tonight with David Muir, the lawsuit said.

"No provision of Section 315 [of the Communications Act] permits the government to demand a journalist’s or on-air anchor’s messages to her producer, to inventory her political contributions, or to audit the editorial standards of an entire news division," the lawsuit said, adding that Carr has not initiated similar equal-time investigations into conservative talk radio stations.

The View’s speech chilled

Disney acknowledged that The View has changed its process for evaluating potential guests because of the FCC proceeding. No political candidate has appeared on the show since the February 2026 appearance of Talarico.

"Historically, decisions about which candidates or public figures to invite as guests were made based on newsworthiness, audience interest, and scheduling alone," the lawsuit said. "Since the Bureau’s inquiry began, ABC must now evaluate any invitation to a political candidate for its potential consequences, including whether it might later be cited by the Commission as a basis for non-renewal in the Stations’ impending license renewal proceedings."

ABC hasn't stopped making news decisions that it knows would anger Trump, however. Last month, ABC decided not to broadcast a Trump primetime address live. "In direct response to ABC's decision not to broadcast his address—and during the address itself—the President called for the revocation of the ABC Owned Stations' broadcast licenses, as well as those of NBC, which had similarly chosen not to broadcast the address," the lawsuit said.

Gomez said she hopes that Disney's lawsuit "will mark the beginning of the end of this administration’s disregard for the Constitution and the law, and that the coming months will bring the costly legal defeat this agency has been asking for since it started down this path. It is time this administration understands that the Constitution does not bend to political convenience, and that the First Amendment protects the news and commentary Americans see on their screens even when those in power wish it didn’t.”

The Freedom of the Press Foundation also praised the lawsuit. The group recently sued Trump over Truth Social's scheme to sell real-time access to posts from Trump for up to $100,000 a month.

“It’s about time for someone to take Carr and his FCC to court over their endless campaign of intimidation and retaliation against journalism that displeases Carr’s thin-skinned boss," said the group's chief of advocacy, Seth Stern. "No matter what pretexts he asserts, Carr’s modus operandi is clear: to serve as Trump’s censorship czar and abuse his office to repeatedly and exclusively target Trump’s perceived adversaries in the media, whether through sham proceedings or threatening letters and X posts. Carr knows the FCC is not the journalism police and said so regularly himself before he decided to throw away any integrity he once had to kiss up to Trump. Countless others whose First Amendment rights have been chilled by Carr’s antics should follow Disney’s lead.”

To get a temporary restraining order or preliminary injunction, Disney has to show it is likely to win the case and that it would suffer irreparable harm without a court order. In addition to describing the harm it has already suffered, Disney said the administration's campaign against ABC will be particularly damaging during the run up to the midterm election.

"Indeed, a Commission intent on influencing coverage could hardly have chosen a more opportune moment," Disney said. "Plaintiffs must make editorial judgments about how to cover the election in the shadow of a threatened corporate death sentence, and the Commission has every incentive to let that threat loom as long as possible. Nor can that harm be undone after the fact."

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ABC accused the Trump Administration of waging "a retaliatory campaign" because it doesn't like what the network broadcasts.

alternative_right shares a report from 404 Media: Amazon is buying massive quantities of books, scanning them for AI training data, and destroying them in the process. A 404 Media investigation was able to reveal Amazon's book buying operation, which hasn't been previously reported, by placing a tracking device in a rare book we suspected would be acquired by an AI company for training data, and following it around the country to its final destination. That final destination was an Amazon warehouse in Las Vegas, Nevada. Amazon employees who work at this location say all they do is receive massive shipments of printed books which they then cut the bindings off in order to scan the books more quickly. The printed book is destroyed in the process. The logo of the Amazon team that works at this warehouse, called VGT3, is a dinosaur, brandishing its teeth and with a book in its hands. "Amazon purchases books through commercial channels to help develop and improve the products and services our customers use," an Amazon spokesperson told 404 Media in a statement.

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Some take their criticism even further. Reacting to Flock's changes, an EFF statement calls it "Too little, too late," while calling it Flock's admission that their technology needs reforms. But... To be clear, our position has long been that police, at a minimum, need to get a warrant, signed by a judge, in order to search for historic ALPR data regarding specific vehicles. For us, it's common sense: if police want to dip into historic ALPR data like they were going back in time to retroactively follow your comings and goings, they need a warrant. There's also nothing stopping Flock from rescinding these latest reforms. This all leads to the bigger and more important issue: We should not be letting companies decide how much privacy we deserve... It shouldn't be up to Flock or any other ALPR vendor to decide how long police can collect and retain data on millions, if not hundreds of millions, of innocent people. We need lawmakers to step up and pass laws that restrict police's use of surveillance technology. After all, the surveillance business model is the problem, and a few company-imposed slapdash reforms aren't going to change that.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.