A show that prides itself on realism and grounded portrayals of healthcare professionals should not make this mistake.
Senate Democrats Are Quietly Plotting To Oust Chuck Schumer
Senate Democrats Are Quietly Plotting To Oust Chuck Schumer
Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer has had a fractured relationship with the Democratic Party base ever since he voted to fund the government last March. Unfortunately for him, time hasn’t healed that wound, and there’s a growing resistance to Schumer that hopes to oust him from his leadership position after the midterms.
The Wall Street Journal, drawing on more than four dozen interviews with Democratic senators, candidates, current and former congressional aides, activists, and advisers, found widespread unease about the New York senator’s grip on the party’s direction. The report makes it clear that Schumer’s own colleagues increasingly see him as an anchor, slowing their response to President Trump, steering primaries toward centrists they don’t want, and draining the fundraising pipeline that Democrats desperately need heading into the midterm elections.
According to the report, last month, Sen. Chris Murphy of Connecticut met with progressive activists at a French restaurant in Georgetown. The conversation turned to what to do about Schumer. According to people familiar with the dinner, Murphy disclosed that some lawmakers had already been running informal vote counts to see whether enough support existed to remove Schumer from his leadership post. Murphy added that Schumer had enough backing to survive. But the fact that anyone was counting at all said something.
Murphy has since walked it back, carefully. “Could someone infer from that that someone was keeping a count? Maybe, but that’s not what I meant,” he told reporters. “I meant that he has the support of the caucus.”
But Murphy’s backpedaling doesn’t change the reality. Murphy is reportedly part of a group of senators who have been actively canvassing colleagues about their frustrations with Schumer. This group, nicknamed “Fight Club,” (hey…) is a Signal chat group where progressives coordinate strategy around opposing Schumer’s preferred candidates in key 2026 races. The Fight Club’s grievance, at its core, is that Schumer is tilting the playing field toward centrists while an insurgent energy on the left goes untapped. The group includes Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass) and Sen. Tina Smith (D-Minn.), and it appears that Warren has been initiating those conversations directly. Smith’s advisers have gone further, holding discussions with other Senate staff about concrete scenarios to challenge Schumer’s leadership.
The concern isn’t purely ideological. It’s financial, and that’s where things get uncomfortable. Schumer’s aligned super PAC, Senate Majority PAC, got outpaced by its Republican counterpart last year. Entering 2026, the Democratic super PAC had $36 million in cash on hand and $12.4 million in debt. The GOP’s equivalent had $100 million on hand and zero debt.
In the money primary – the one that quietly decides Senate races before a single vote is cast – Schumer’s side is getting lapped.
Making matters worse for Schumer, meetings among Democratic Senate chiefs of staff, which should be routine operational sessions, have reportedly become forums for airing discontent with Schumer’s stewardship. The pressure building in those rooms is aimed at a specific outcome: Schumer commits to retiring from the Senate when his seat is up for re-election in 2028, clearing a path for whoever comes next.
That next person may already have a name attached. Sen. Brian Schatz of Hawaii has been identified as Schumer’s own preferred successor. Apparently, Schumer has thought this through enough to have a pick. But Schatz isn’t moving until Schumer moves first. His posture, per senators and aides familiar with the discussions, is to wait it out.
Schumer may have the votes to survive a mutiny for now. But his colleagues are doing the math, his fundraising is underperforming, his preferred candidates are generating internal blowback, and the party seems anxious to see him go. The caucus isn’t in open revolt yet, but it’s not looking good for Chuck Schumer.
Tyler Durden
Sun, 03/22/2026 – 13:25
Analysts say Gaza ‘civilian’ deaths include Hamas, other terror members working as medics, media workers
As Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad (PIJ) publicly claim their dead, new research shows that many previously counted as civilians were in fact members of the terrorist organizations, undermining accusations that Israeli forces deliberately targeted civilians in Gaza.Researchers monitoring the Hamas-run health ministry’s death reports told Fox News Digital that a growing number of ‘martyrs’ were exposed as terrorists by their own groups such as Hamas, despite maintaining public identities as healthcare or media workers.Gabriel Epstein, senior policy associate at Israel Policy Forum, told Fox News Digital that he has tracked multiple individuals named by Hamas and PIJ as martyrs killed in battle in Gaza who held positions in the health industry, including nongovernmental organizations (NGOs.)US-BACKED GAZA AID GROUP SLAMS DOCTORS WITHOUT BORDERS, ACCUSES IT OF SPREADING ‘FALSE’ CLAIMSEpstein found several individuals labeled as medical staff who are also members of terrorist groups. The most serious revelation from the martyr list is Fadi al-Wadiyya, a physiotherapist for Médecins sans frontières, who was killed by Israel Defense Forces in June 2024. MSF responded to the death, saying they were “outraged” and “strongly condemn[ed] the killing of our colleague.”When the IDF claimed that al-Wadiyya was a member of PIJ, MSF said they had “no prior knowledge” of his “alleged involvement in military activities” and said they had “not received any formal explanation” of “the circumstances of his killing.”In a Telegram account claiming to be the media reserve for the Al-Quds Brigades, a post mourning al-Wadiyya’s martyrdom on Feb. 24 lists the physiotherapist as an assistant to the military manufacturing unit of PIJ’s Al-Quds Brigades.Fox News Digital asked MSF whether they were aware of al-Wadiyya’s PIJ connections prior to the martyr announcement. A spokesperson said, “We would not knowingly employ people engaging in military activity” as it “would pose a danger to our staff and patients by compromising our neutrality.”HAMAS TERRORISTS USE AMBULANCES, SCHOOLS, HOSPITALS IN VIOLATION OF US-BROKERED CEASEFIRE, IDF OFFICIAL SAYSThe spokesperson said that “MSF had no indication that Fadi Al Wadiya might have been involved in military activity of any kind prior to the Israeli authorities’ online posts in June 2024. In the immediate aftermath of Al-Wadiya’s killing, we asked for explanations from the Israeli authorities, but never received an official response. If the Israeli authorities were aware of Al-Wadiya’s links with militant activities, they never shared this info with us until after he was killed. To this day, the only information they shared and that we are aware of is what was shared through public social media posts.”The IDF banned MSF operations in Gaza from the beginning of March because the organization refused to provide a list of its Palestinian employees. In response to Fox News Digital’s questions about whether they would consider providing this list to the IDF presently, MSF’s spokesperson said, “We did not share our staff lists with Israel because we did not receive concrete assurances to ensure the safety of our staff or the independent management of our operations. This is a place where humanitarian workers have frequently been detained, attacked, and killed. We have a responsibility to protect our colleagues from harm.”Epstein shared several other cases of healthcare workers who played prominent roles in terror groups.MEDICAL NGO THAT SLAMMED ISRAEL’S ANTI-TERROR RAID NOW QUITS GAZA HOSPITAL OVER ARMED OPERATIVESMohammed Akram Abdullah al-Kafarna was mourned by the Palestinian Nursing and Midwifery Association’s Facebook page as the nursing supervisor at Kamal Adwan Hospital and by the Institute for Palestine Studies as head of the Gaza nursing system.[v] A Telegram account that lists members of Hamas’ best-outfitted Izz al-Din al-Qassam Brigades, al-Kafarna is described as one of Beit Hanoun’s “Qassam Martyrs.”Ayman Suleiman Aliyan Abu Tayr was listed as martyred in Khan Younis in June 2025. The Institute for Palestine Studies labels him as a nurse and head of the clinical nutrition department at Nasser Hospital. According to a Telegram account linked to PIJ’s Al-Quds Brigades, Abu Tayr was a Commander in the Central Operations Unit of the Al-Quds Brigades.Jaber Abdulhamid Diab Mohammedin was mourned on the Palestinian Ministry of Health General Directorate of Nursing’s Facebook page as an Intensive Care Unit nurse at the Al-Rantisi Specialized Children’s Hospital. A Telegram account linked to the Islamic Jihad Movement lists Mohammedin as a commander in the military manufacturing unit of the PIJ’s Al-Quds Brigade.Nidal Jaber Abdulfattah al-Najjar is labeled as an administrator at the Palestinian Ministry of Health, according to the Institute for Palestine Studies, while a mourner on Facebook noted that he worked in the Al-Rantisi Children’s Hospital. He is labeled on a Telegram account emblazoned with Hamas’ distinctive red triangle as a martyr commander of Hamas’ Al-Radwan Battalion.Salo Aizenberg, director of media watchdog group HonestReporting, told Fox News Digital that he is tracking at least ten “virtually indisputable” examples of journalists who are actually combatants, working with Hamas and other terrorist groups.David Adesnik, vice president of research for the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told Fox News Digital that he has also been tracking the disclosures. “With PIJ, the number of commanders who operated with civilian cover is striking,” Adesnik said. “We’re at a point where the evidence indicates that this duplicity was a routine part of a strategy to infiltrate civilian organization, especially humanitarian ones. This provides access and protection while ensuring outrage when these supposed humanitarians are killed.”Adesnik said he believes it “likely that Hamas also employed this strategy in a systematic way, but right now we mainly have the PIJ disclosures. Given that Hamas is many times larger, if it were to disclose this kind of information, the effects could easily ripple across the humanitarian sector in Gaza.”Among the cases Aizenberg is tracking are media workers. He said that his list is “based solely on admissions by those groups and other Gazan sources,” and “does not include the many additional examples identified through Israeli evidence.”Though the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) cites Yacoup Al-Borsch as a journalist and the executive director of Namaa Radio, Aizenberg has found “numerous social media posts and martyr notices identifying him as a fighter and ‘mujahid.’” This includes a Facebook post from an account affiliated with the Al-Omari Mosque in Jabalia.Ahmed Abu Sharia was a freelancer who worked for outlets like Iranian Tasnim News Agency, the CPJ says. According to the “official” Telegram site of the Mujahideen Brigades, the Palestinian Mujahideen movement’s military wing, he was also a member of the Mujahideen Brigades.Rizq Abu Shakian was a “media worker and administrator for the pro-Hamas Palestine Now Agency,” according to CPJ. Shakian also appears in Hamas uniform on a Telegram site that shares images of Palestinian martyrs. According to Aizenberg’s research, he was a member of the Al-Qassam Brigades.In response to questions about whether CPJ would update listings of journalists who have been claimed as terror affiliates, the group directed Fox News Digital to its policy for updating listings, which states, “CPJ has a long-standing policy of updating its data and the accompanying narrative accounts without issuing formal corrections as new information becomes available over time. In certain cases, a record may be removed from public view when new information leads CPJ to determine that a case falls outside its mandate or for security concerns, such as the safety of the journalist and their family. CPJ will publicly record when it has removed a journalist from the database for a reason outside of security concerns. “As the shaky ceasefire in Gaza continues, analysts say they continue to place value in closely examining the war’s casualties. Epstein said that “reviewing cases of militants who held dual civilian roles in key sectors like media, healthcare and education is important for the historical record and underscores the information limitations press, government, and analysts face in real time during conflict.” He said that “over time, militant identification can give a sense of just how deep Hamas, PIJ and other militant groups’ hold over key sectors in Gaza was.”
Cuban Regime Insists They Are ‘Prepared’ to Repel U.S. Invasion as Blackouts Grip Collapsing Communist State (VIDEO)
Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Minister during an interview on NBC’s Meet THe Press.
Cuba’s communist government says its military is preparing to fend off a possible military invasion as President Donald Trump escalates economic pressure on the island.
The comments were made by Cuba’s Deputy Foreign Minister Carlos Fernandez de Cossio during an interview on NBC’s Meet the Press.
“Our military is always prepared,” he said. “And in fact it is preparing these days for the possibility of military aggression.”
“We would be naive if we would not do that. But we truly hope that it doesn’t occur.”
The comments come as the Trump administration tightens sanctions, including a de facto fuel blockade that has left the island struggling to maintain basic energy supply.
Cuba has suffered repeated nationwide blackouts in recent months, including a full grid collapse last week and another major outage reported Saturday.
“It is very severe,” de Cossio said of the fuel shortages.
STRATEGIC PRESSURE: After the U.S. cut off Venezuelan oil shipments to Cuba, the island is now facing SEVERE fuel shortages and rolling blackouts.
Pressure is mounting on the regime thanks to the Trump Administration. pic.twitter.com/fflP7YDY6F
— Michael Carbonara (@MCarbonaraFL) March 15, 2026
He went on to express hope that the “boycott that the United States has been imposing does not last and cannot be sustained forever.”
Despite the worsening situation, Cuban officials ruled out any political concessions.
“The nature of the Cuban government… [is] not part of the negotiation,” De Cossio said.
The regime has released a small number of political prisoners and floated limited economic openings, but U.S. officials have dismissed those moves as insufficient.
Cuban authorities also made clear that President Miguel Díaz-Canel will remain in power.
While insisting the country is “not in a state of collapse,” De Cossio acknowledged the growing strain as fuel shortages, blackouts and economic pressure continue to mount.
“We’re being as creative as possible,” he insisted.
Earlier this week, Trump said he expected to have the “honor” of liberating the island from its communist regime.
“It’s a failed nation. They have no money, they have no oil, they have no nothing. They have nice land. They have nice landscape, you know? It’s a beautiful island. I think they have great people.”
”I think Cuba is, in its whole way, with, you know, tourism and everything else, it’s a beautiful island, great weather.”
”I do believe I’ll be the honor of— having the honor of taking Cuba. That’d be good honor, that’s a big honor.”
Trump on Cuba:
I do believe I’ll have the honor of taking Cuba. That would be good. That’s a big honor.
I can free it or take it, I think I can do anything I want with it. pic.twitter.com/I0TpVCY73j
— Clash Report (@clashreport) March 16, 2026
The post Cuban Regime Insists They Are ‘Prepared’ to Repel U.S. Invasion as Blackouts Grip Collapsing Communist State (VIDEO) appeared first on The Gateway Pundit.
Chris Christie: Donald Trump ‘Plays Checkers, Not Chess’
Sunday, during an appearance on ABC’s “This Week,” former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie said that President Donald Trump “plays checkers, not chess.” Host Jon Karl said, “And this is all happening as we have this shutdown of the Department
The post Chris Christie: Donald Trump ‘Plays Checkers, Not Chess’ appeared first on Breitbart.
How to Remove Negative Items From Your Credit Report
Negative marks on your credit report can hurt your credit score and affect your ability to qualify for financial products, so it’s often stressful to discover them. But if an inaccurate item is showing up on your credit report, you have recourse to address the mistake.
Take a deep breath, then scroll down. This guide will walk you through exactly what to do if you find yourself in this spot.
Here’s how to remove negative items from your credit report
Removing negative items from your credit report typically involves filing a dispute with one (or multiple) credit bureaus as well as potentially contacting the creditor or debt collector directly.
Identify errors
Many potential issues can show up on a credit report, which can affect your scores. These may include late or missed payments, charge-offs, collections, bankruptcies and hard inquiries. (Negative items on your credit report can stem from bills like credit cards, medical bills or utility bills.)
Other types of credit report inaccuracies may be more common, like misspelled names and incorrect address or employment information. However, these issues are not considered negative items because they don’t affect your credit score(s).
If you notice a sudden drop in your credit score, receive an alert about a debt you don’t recognize or notice something that looks off during a routine check of your credit, you may be dealing with an inaccurate negative item on your credit report. Don’t worry: There are processes to resolve the situation.
First, you’ll need to get a copy of your credit report. To do so, simply navigate to AnnualCreditReport.com and follow the steps to request reports from Equifax, Experian and TransUnion. You’re entitled to a free online report from each of these three major credit bureaus every week.
Once you have your credit reports, read through them to see if there’s anything you need to address.
File a dispute with the credit reporting agency
If there are negative, inaccurate marks on your credit report, you should file a dispute with the credit reporting agency.
While the credit bureaus may try to steer you toward disputing the information with the creditor or debt collector reporting the info, it’s important to know your rights. The credit bureaus are required to investigate disputes, and their websites have easy-to-find buttons where you can contest inaccuracies.
According to the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, or CFPB, “you should explain in writing what you think is wrong, why, and include copies of documents that support your dispute.”
Each credit agency has a web address and phone number that you can use for disputes:
Equifax: equifax.com/personal/credit-reportservices/credit-dispute/ or 800-864-2978
Experian: experian.com/disputes/main.html or 888-397-3742
TransUnion: transunion.com/credit-disputes/dispute-your-credit or 800-916-8800
For any serious issues, however, many experts recommend submitting a dispute via certified mail. According to the Federal Trade Commission, this is advisable because you can pay for a return receipt, which will give you a rock-solid record showing that the credit bureau received your dispute.
What should you say in your letter? This CFPB guide includes a template letter for mailed disputes and more information about the documents you can attach to your request.
Disputes can sometimes be resolved in less than a day; however, under the Fair Credit Reporting Act, the process can take up to 30 days.
Hopefully, the credit bureau or bureaus will quickly delete or correct the issue you’ve reported. If the outcome of the dispute isn’t what you wanted, you can add a “statement of dispute” to your credit report, which gives lenders reviewing your credit file the ability to see your side of the story.
But assuming you have a good case, don’t stop there. A next step could be to submit a second dispute with additional evidence to advance your case.
You can also file complaints with the CFPB and your state attorney general’s office. If you’re interested in the latter option, the processes vary by state, so consult the proper agency’s website for more information.
File a dispute directly with the creditor
Going through the credit bureaus isn’t your only option. In some cases, you’ll have better luck submitting a dispute to the creditor or debt collector reporting the inaccurate information. For example, if a lender you’re using reported an incorrect balance, you may be able to give them a call and get it corrected.
In other instances, you may not even recognize the lender.
While it’s rare, bookkeeping errors could even result in someone else’s debt showing up on your credit report if, say, you have a similar name to them. If you can track down the company that misreported information, ask them to correct it. In either event, you’ll want to file a formal dispute.
This means mailing a dispute letter to the furnisher explaining what’s wrong. (You can find a simple letter template on the CFPB website.) Again, it’s recommended that you use certified mail to create a paper trail. Attach any relevant documents to bolster your case, and consider printing out a copy of your credit report with the error or errors marked in pen.
You can typically find the furnisher’s address on your credit report. Creditors and debt collectors are obligated to investigate and respond to disputes. If your dispute is successful, they must notify the credit bureaus to correct your reports.
Consider professional help
Disputing errors on your credit report doesn’t have to cost a bunch of money. Aside from potential postage costs, you can often get issues corrected for free.
If you prefer a more hands-off approach and cost isn’t a consideration, there’s a whole industry of credit repair companies than can dispute errors on your behalf. Also, if you’ve been a victim of identity theft and have a laundry list of items to dispute, you may find it easier to enlist professional help.
Make sure to carefully research your options before paying for a credit repair service, as the industry has its share of controversies and scams. Money’s editorial team has spent thousands of hours researching the best credit repair companies.
Can removing negative items improve your credit score?
Removing negative items from your credit report can drastically improve your credit score. That’s because the main credit scoring models, VantageScore and FICO, use formulas to calculate your credit score (an indicator of your creditworthiness) based on the information in your credit report.
Delinquencies, charge-offs, bankruptcies, repossessions and foreclosures can bring down your credit score by 100 points or more. If you’re able to remove a negative item from your credit report, you could potentially see your credit score shoot back up by roughly the same amount.
This matters because having a strong credit score can help you qualify for the best credit cards, mortgage rates and auto loans (and snag low rates on them). A good credit score can also make it easier to secure an apartment and obtain affordable insurance. Even if you’re not looking to borrow money now, working on your credit is important because it will help position you well for the future.
Should you dispute accurate information on your credit report?
Contesting accurate information on your credit report — like large balances you owe or late payments — is risky. Your dispute is unlikely to succeed, and the act of submitting the dispute can actually cause a negative item like a collection account to be updated to show recent collection activity, potentially worsening your credit issues. The credit bureaus may also start to assume all your disputes are frivolous, which could make it harder to correct problems down the road.
When accurate-but-negative items are bringing down your credit, the best solution is to address the root issue. That may mean improving your budgeting so you can start chipping away at debts or picking up some extra work. Autopay features can also help you stop missing payments.
If you’re behind on credit card or other loan payments and have negative items on your credit report as a result, it’s likely going to be more difficult to get these removed from your credit report. Collections, repossessions and foreclosures can stay on your credit report for seven years, while the maximum is 10 years for bankruptcies.
There are a few things you can try.
First, send the creditor a “goodwill deletion” request. This works best if you’ve only missed a payment or two and have already taken steps to get your account back in good standing. In your goodwill deletion request, you should explain what happened and detail if any specific hardships or mix-ups caused the issue. Unfortunately, with a goodwill request, you’re really just at the mercy of your creditor — they have no obligation to help you if the negative item was accurately reported.
Another option is to try to negotiate a pay-for-delete agreement. In short, this involves contacting the creditor or debt collection agency and offering to pay off the debt in question (or an agreed upon amount) in exchange for a commitment in writing that they will remove the negative item from your report. Lenders technically aren’t supposed to remove accurate items like collections, so this is a long shot. But some consumers have reported success with the pay-for-delete method and it may be worth considering.
The good news: The most recent credit scoring models don’t penalize consumers as much — or at all — for paid-off collections. That should offer you some comfort if your attempts at removal are unsuccessful. Just focusing on paying off your debt and potentially negotiating partial payments (or exploring payment plans) can go a long way to improving your credit.
FAQ about removing negative items from your credit report
Can you erase bad credit overnight?
Typically, improving your credit is more of a journey than a quick fix. Budgeting, on-time payments and better discipline are some of the keys to improving your credit over time. With that said, a negative item on your credit report can sometimes pull down your credit report by over 100 points. If a negative item is inaccurate and you can get it corrected, your credit score could improve significantly within a few days or weeks.
Can you remove negative items from your credit report?
Yes, you can usually remove negative items from your credit report if they are inaccurate. Removing accurate negative items from your credit report is much more difficult — and can be very risky.
Do I need a credit repair service?
According to the CFPB, you do not need a credit repair service.
“There is no reason to pay someone else to dispute inaccuracies on your credit report for you as it is already a legal right available to you for free,” according to the CFPB.
If you don’t mind the cost, a credit repair service could save you time. But beware of credit repair scams and other risks such as possible repercussions from frivolous disputes.
Summary of this guide to fixing credit report errors
Removing negative items from your credit report involves disputing the errors with the credit reporting agencies and contesting the issues with the creditor or debt collection agency reporting the inaccurate information. Consumers are entitled to an accurate credit report. But it can take some legwork to fix issues. You can consult this guide as a resource for help removing negative, inaccurate information from your reports.
More from Money:
How to Check Your Credit Report
Buy Now, Pay Later Loans Can Now Appear on Your Credit Report
What Is ‘Good’ Debt, and How Can It Improve Your Finances?
Testing autonomous agents (Or: how I learned to stop worrying and embrace chaos)
Look, we’ve spent the last 18 months building production AI systems, and we’ll tell you what keeps us up at night — and it’s not whether the model can answer questions. That’s table stakes now. What haunts us is the mental image of an agent autonomously approving a six-figure vendor contract at 2 a.m. because someone typo’d a config file.We’ve moved past the era of “ChatGPT wrappers” (thank God), but the industry still treats autonomous agents like they’re just chatbots with API access. They’re not. When you give an AI system the ability to take actions without human confirmation, you’re crossing a fundamental threshold. You’re not building a helpful assistant anymore — you’re building something closer to an employee. And that changes everything about how we need to engineer these systems.The autonomy problem nobody talks aboutHere’s what’s wild: We’ve gotten really good at making models that *sound* confident. But confidence and reliability aren’t the same thing, and the gap between them is where production systems go to die.We learned this the hard way during a pilot program where we let an AI agent manage calendar scheduling across executive teams. Seems simple, right? The agent could check availability, send invites, handle conflicts. Except, one Monday morning, it rescheduled a board meeting because it interpreted “let’s push this if we need to” in a Slack message as an actual directive. The model wasn’t wrong in its interpretation — it was plausible. But plausible isn’t good enough when you’re dealing with autonomy.That incident taught us something crucial: The challenge isn’t building agents that work most of the time. It’s building agents that fail gracefully, know their limitations, and have the circuit breakers to prevent catastrophic mistakes.What reliability actually means for autonomous systemsLayered reliability architectureWhen we talk about reliability in traditional software engineering, we’ve got decades of patterns: Redundancy, retries, idempotency, graceful degradation. But AI agents break a lot of our assumptions.Traditional software fails in predictable ways. You can write unit tests. You can trace execution paths. With AI agents, you’re dealing with probabilistic systems making judgment calls. A bug isn’t just a logic error—it’s the model hallucinating a plausible-sounding but completely fabricated API endpoint, or misinterpreting context in a way that technically parses but completely misses the human intent.So what does reliability look like here? In our experience, it’s a layered approach.Layer 1: Model selection and prompt engineeringThis is foundational but insufficient. Yes, use the best model you can afford. Yes, craft your prompts carefully with examples and constraints. But don’t fool yourself into thinking that a great prompt is enough. I’ve seen too many teams ship “GPT-4 with a really good system prompt” and call it enterprise-ready.Layer 2: Deterministic guardrailsBefore the model does anything irreversible, run it through hard checks. Is it trying to access a resource it shouldn’t? Is the action within acceptable parameters? We’re talking old-school validation logic — regex, schema validation, allowlists. It’s not sexy, but it’s effective.One pattern that’s worked well for us: Maintain a formal action schema. Every action an agent can take has a defined structure, required fields, and validation rules. The agent proposes actions in this schema, and we validate before execution. If validation fails, we don’t just block it — we feed the validation errors back to the agent and let it try again with context about what went wrong.Layer 3: Confidence and uncertainty quantificationHere’s where it gets interesting. We need agents that know what they don’t know. We’ve been experimenting with agents that can explicitly reason about their confidence before taking actions. Not just a probability score, but actual articulated uncertainty: “I’m interpreting this email as a request to delay the project, but the phrasing is ambiguous and could also mean…”This doesn’t prevent all mistakes, but it creates natural breakpoints where you can inject human oversight. High-confidence actions go through automatically. Medium-confidence actions get flagged for review. Low-confidence actions get blocked with an explanation.Layer 4: Observability and auditabilityAction Validation Pipeline If you can’t debug it, you can’t trust it. Every decision the agent makes needs to be loggable, traceable, and explainable. Not just “what action did it take” but “what was it thinking, what data did it consider, what was the reasoning chain?”We’ve built a custom logging system that captures the full large language model (LLM) interaction — the prompt, the response, the context window, even the model temperature settings. It’s verbose as hell, but when something goes wrong (and it will), you need to be able to reconstruct exactly what happened. Plus, this becomes your dataset for fine-tuning and improvement.Guardrails: The art of saying noLet’s talk about guardrails, because this is where engineering discipline really matters. A lot of teams approach guardrails as an afterthought — “we’ll add some safety checks if we need them.” That’s backwards. Guardrails should be your starting point.We think of guardrails in three categories.Permission boundariesWhat is the agent physically allowed to do? This is your blast radius control. Even if the agent hallucinates the worst possible action, what’s the maximum damage it can cause?We use a principle called “graduated autonomy.” New agents start with read-only access. As they prove reliable, they graduate to low-risk writes (creating calendar events, sending internal messages). High-risk actions (financial transactions, external communications, data deletion) either require explicit human approval or are simply off-limits.One technique that’s worked well: Action cost budgets. Each agent has a daily “budget” denominated in some unit of risk or cost. Reading a database record costs 1 unit. Sending an email costs 10. Initiating a vendor payment costs 1,000. The agent can operate autonomously until it exhausts its budget; then, it needs human intervention. This creates a natural throttle on potentially problematic behavior.Graduated Autonomy and Action Cost Budget Semantic HoundariesWhat should the agent understand as in-scope vs out-of-scope? This is trickier because it’s conceptual, not just technical.I’ve found that explicit domain definitions help a lot. Our customer service agent has a clear mandate: handle product questions, process returns, escalate complaints. Anything outside that domain — someone asking for investment advice, technical support for third-party products, personal favors — gets a polite deflection and escalation.The challenge is making these boundaries robust to prompt injection and jailbreaking attempts. Users will try to convince the agent to help with out-of-scope requests. Other parts of the system might inadvertently pass instructions that override the agent’s boundaries. You need multiple layers of defense here.Operational boundariesHow much can the agent do, and how fast? This is your rate limiting and resource control.We’ve implemented hard limits on everything: API calls per minute, maximum tokens per interaction, maximum cost per day, maximum number of retries before human escalation. These might seem like artificial constraints, but they’re essential for preventing runaway behavior.We once saw an agent get stuck in a loop trying to resolve a scheduling conflict. It kept proposing times, getting rejections, and trying again. Without rate limits, it sent 300 calendar invites in an hour. With proper operational boundaries, it would’ve hit a threshold and escalated to a human after attempt number 5.Agents need their own style of testingTraditional software testing doesn’t cut it for autonomous agents. You can’t just write test cases that cover all the edge cases, because with LLMs, everything is an edge case.What’s worked for us:Simulation environmentsBuild a sandbox that mirrors production but with fake data and mock services. Let the agent run wild. See what breaks. We do this continuously — every code change goes through 100 simulated scenarios before it touches production.The key is making scenarios realistic. Don’t just test happy paths. Simulate angry customers, ambiguous requests, contradictory information, system outages. Throw in some adversarial examples. If your agent can’t handle a test environment where things go wrong, it definitely can’t handle production.Red teamingGet creative people to try to break your agent. Not just security researchers, but domain experts who understand the business logic. Some of our best improvements came from sales team members who tried to “trick” the agent into doing things it shouldn’t.Shadow modeBefore you go live, run the agent in shadow mode alongside humans. The agent makes decisions, but humans actually execute the actions. You log both the agent’s choices and the human’s choices, and you analyze the delta.This is painful and slow, but it’s worth it. You’ll find all kinds of subtle misalignments you’d never catch in testing. Maybe the agent technically gets the right answer, but with phrasing that violates company tone guidelines. Maybe it makes legally correct but ethically questionable decisions. Shadow mode surfaces these issues before they become real problems.The human-in-the-loop patternThree Human-in-the-Loop Patterns Despite all the automation, humans remain essential. The question is: Where in the loop?We’re increasingly convinced that “human-in-the-loop” is actually several distinct patterns:Human-on-the-loop: The agent operates autonomously, but humans monitor dashboards and can intervene. This is your steady-state for well-understood, low-risk operations.Human-in-the-loop: The agent proposes actions, humans approve them. This is your training wheels mode while the agent proves itself, and your permanent mode for high-risk operations.Human-with-the-loop: Agent and human collaborate in real-time, each handling the parts they’re better at. The agent does the grunt work, the human does the judgment calls.The trick is making these transitions smooth. An agent shouldn’t feel like a completely different system when you move from autonomous to supervised mode. Interfaces, logging, and escalation paths should all be consistent.Failure modes and recoveryLet’s be honest: Your agent will fail. The question is whether it fails gracefully or catastrophically.We classify failures into three categories:Recoverable errors: The agent tries to do something, it doesn’t work, the agent realizes it didn’t work and tries something else. This is fine. This is how complex systems operate. As long as the agent isn’t making things worse, let it retry with exponential backoff.Detectable failures: The agent does something wrong, but monitoring systems catch it before significant damage occurs. This is where your guardrails and observability pay off. The agent gets rolled back, humans investigate, you patch the issue.Undetectable failures: The agent does something wrong, and nobody notices until much later. These are the scary ones. Maybe it’s been misinterpreting customer requests for weeks. Maybe it’s been making subtly incorrect data entries. These accumulate into systemic issues.The defense against undetectable failures is regular auditing. We randomly sample agent actions and have humans review them. Not just pass/fail, but detailed analysis. Is the agent showing any drift in behavior? Are there patterns in its mistakes? Is it developing any concerning tendencies?The cost-performance tradeoffHere’s something nobody talks about enough: reliability is expensive.Every guardrail adds latency. Every validation step costs compute. Multiple model calls for confidence checking multiply your API costs. Comprehensive logging generates massive data volumes.You have to be strategic about where you invest. Not every agent needs the same level of reliability. A marketing copy generator can be looser than a financial transaction processor. A scheduling assistant can retry more liberally than a code deployment system.We use a risk-based approach. High-risk agents get all the safeguards, multiple validation layers, extensive monitoring. Lower-risk agents get lighter-weight protections. The key is being explicit about these trade-offs and documenting why each agent has the guardrails it does.Organizational challengesWe’d be remiss if we didn’t mention that the hardest parts aren’t technical — they’re organizational.Who owns the agent when it makes a mistake? Is it the engineering team that built it? The business unit that deployed it? The person who was supposed to be supervising it?How do you handle edge cases where the agent’s logic is technically correct but contextually inappropriate? If the agent follows its rules but violates an unwritten norm, who’s at fault?What’s your incident response process when an agent goes rogue? Traditional runbooks assume human operators making mistakes. How do you adapt these for autonomous systems?These questions don’t have universal answers, but they need to be addressed before you deploy. Clear ownership, documented escalation paths, and well-defined success metrics are just as important as the technical architecture.Where we go from hereThe industry is still figuring this out. There’s no established playbook for building reliable autonomous agents. We’re all learning in production, and that’s both exciting and terrifying.What we know for sure: The teams that succeed will be the ones who treat this as an engineering discipline, not just an AI problem. You need traditional software engineering rigor — testing, monitoring, incident response — combined with new techniques specific to probabilistic systems.You need to be paranoid but not paralyzed. Yes, autonomous agents can fail in spectacular ways. But with proper guardrails, they can also handle enormous workloads with superhuman consistency. The key is respecting the risks while embracing the possibilities.We’ll leave you with this: Every time we deploy a new autonomous capability, we run a pre-mortem. We imagine it’s six months from now and the agent has caused a significant incident. What happened? What warning signs did we miss? What guardrails failed?This exercise has saved us more times than we can count. It forces you to think through failure modes before they occur, to build defenses before you need them, to question assumptions before they bite you.Because in the end, building enterprise-grade autonomous AI agents isn’t about making systems that work perfectly. It’s about making systems that fail safely, recover gracefully, and learn continuously.And that’s the kind of engineering that actually matters.Madhvesh Kumar is a principal engineer. Deepika Singh is a senior software engineer. Views expressed are based on hands-on experience building and deploying autonomous agents, along with the occasional 3 AM incident response that makes you question your career choices.
10 Wild Clips from Afroman’s Court Victory over Cops He Mocked in Songs After Erroneous House Raid
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Orban at CPAC Says Fight for Future of Western World Starts with Hungarian Election Next Month
Prime Minister Viktor Orbán cast next month’s elections in Hungary as a key pillar of the American-led effort to retake the West from the progressive globalists of Brussels and other European capitals.
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Police Video of Justin Timberlake’s 2024 Drunken Driving Arrest Released
NEW YORK — Justin Timberlake struggled to perform field sobriety tests requiring him to walk a straight line and stand on one leg after he was pulled over in New York’s Hamptons in 2024 by police officers who suspected him of driving drunk, according to video footage released Friday.
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