Policy & Regulation

Spain's MiDNI app gained mandatory legal acceptance on April 2, positioning the country among the first EU member states with a fully operational national digital ID as the bloc's December 2026 EUDI wallet deadline approaches with uneven progress.

The $1.2 trillion Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act expires September 30, 2026, threatening to slash highway, bridge, transit, and broadband funding to pre-2021 levels as Congress struggles to agree on reauthorization.

The EU and US are finalizing a non-binding agreement to coordinate critical minerals supply chains and challenge China's processing dominance, while the DOE launches a $69 million funding program for domestic extraction and refining.

Colorado, California, and Oregon are all enforcing or adopting wildfire-resistant construction standards in 2026, though municipal capacity and cost concerns threaten to slow the rollout.

A bipartisan Senate bill, a sweeping executive order on gain-of-function research, and a GAO report exposing transparency gaps converge to reshape how the United States governs biological risk.

The CFPB's landmark open banking rule missed its April 1 compliance deadline after a court injunction and agency reconsideration, but major banks are forging private data-sharing deals that may shape the market before regulators act.

A RUSI Journal paper argues that restoring peatlands, wetlands, and forests along Eastern European frontiers could impede mechanized forces while delivering climate and biodiversity benefits at a fraction of the cost of traditional anti-tank defenses.

ICANN will accept applications for new generic top-level domains from April 30 to August 12, 2026, the first such window since 2012, with a $227,000 evaluation fee per application.

One year after Liberation Day, the collision of Trump-era tariffs with hyperscaler memory hoarding has pushed PC prices up 15-20 percent, forced vendors to exit budget segments, and reshaped the consumer electronics supply chain.

Executive Order N-5-26 requires AI vendors seeking California state contracts to certify safeguards against illegal content, bias, and civil rights violations within 120 days.

A DOJ final rule requires state and local governments serving 50,000-plus residents to make all digital services WCAG 2.1 AA compliant by April 24, 2026.

A federal judge in Manhattan has ordered OpenAI to hand over more than 100 million de-identified ChatGPT conversation logs to copyright plaintiffs, marking the most aggressive discovery ruling yet in the sprawling litigation over AI training on copyrighted material.