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Seventh grade Alabama teacher Sarah Wildes relies on a tool called Checkology to teach her students how to spot real news and misinformation.
Courtesy of Sarah Wildes

When Sarah Wildes, a seventh grade teacher in Alabama, was asked by a student about the mass confusion surrounding the results of the 2020 U.S. presidential election, she knew she had a big job in front of her. 

“I have to tread lightly, but I pointed out that we do know,” said Wildes, a science and technology teacher at Sparkman Middle School in the small town of Toney. “There are facts. There have been committees who reviewed the election. The numbers show us a truth, but the social media bubbles confuse us about that truth.”

Wildes and teachers across the country face a vexing and evolving challenge as the new school year begins and students return to the classroom following a roughly 18-month hiatus from normal in-person learning. Since the last time full classrooms congregated, a whole industry of misinformation has exploded online, spreading conspiracy theories on everything from the alleged steal of the presidential election, which Joe Biden won, to the prevalence of microchips in Covid-19 vaccines.

It’s bad enough that kids are exposed to dangerous untruths across their favorite social media apps like Facebook, YouTube and TikTok. An equally large problem is that, while stuck at home during the pandemic, many students had their days of virtual schooling interrupted by screaming parents, who themselves had fallen deep into the internet’s darkest rabbit holes.

Some 15 percent of Americans believe QAnon conspiracy theories, according to a May report from non-profit groups Public Religion Research Institute and Interfaith Youth Core. QAnon believers were largely responsible for spreading “stop the steal” content on social media, backing the lie that former president Donald Trump won the election.

Meanwhile, 22% of Americans self-identify as anti-vaxxers, according to an academic study published in May, even as scientists and public health officials agree on the extreme efficacy and importance of Covid-19 vaccines.

For kids who have yet to fully develop critical thinking skills, basic truths are being distorted by the combination of misinformation on social media and a growing population of duped and radicalized parents.

“They were at home consuming this information without really being able to bust out of their own bubble having been in quarantine,” Wildes said. “They were starved for guidance on how to navigate all the things that they were seeing.”

In addition to dealing with the standard curriculum and trying to make up for lost classroom time, Wildes is taking on the responsibility of helping students filter out misinformation and find reliable news outlets. She’s leaning on the News Literacy Project (NLP), a non-profit in Washington, D.C., that last year developed Checkology, an online tool for educators to help students spot and dispel misinformation.

Checkology teaches students about the various types of misinformation they may encounter, the role the press plays in democracy, understanding bias in the news and recognizing how people fall into conspiracies. Since its launch in May 2016, Checkology has registered more than 1.3 million students and nearly 36,300 teachers. 

“The pandemic, the election, social justice issues — people are looking for information, and educators need support to navigate that disinformation out there,” said Shaelynn Farnsworth, NLP’s director of educator network expansion.

Finding a Reddit community

Other online communities are giving the children of conspiracy theorists ways to connect and share their experiences. And also to detox.

Mobius, a 17-year-old who lives on the West Coast, said his mom is an anti-vaxxer who has started down the path of QAnon. Mobius, who asked us not to use his real name to preserve his family relationships, said his mom talks about the coronavirus as biological warfare and thinks the government is trying to profit from vaccines. He said 90% of her information comes from Facebook or TikTok.

In July, most of Mobius’s family was infected with Covid-19 after his mother contracted the virus and didn’t enter quarantine. She even traveled by plane while she was sick, said Mobius, adding that he was the only one in the family to get vaccinated and to avoid infection.

He said his mom wouldn’t let his siblings get the vaccine and that he missed several childhood immunizations growing up.

Mobius posted about his experience in QAnonCasualties, a Reddit group that says it offers “support, resources and a place to vent” for people who have friends or loved ones “taken in by QAnon.” The group was created in July 2019 and has 186,000 members. It’s flooded with stories that resemble Mobius’ experience.

A woman wearing a pin during an anti-mandatory coronavirus disease (COVID-19) vaccine protest held outside New York City Hall in New York, August 16, 2021.
Jeenah Moon | Reuters

One user post last month was from a university student recounting the anxiety she felt after her dad showed her a video that claimed Covid vaccines would make her infertile. A more recent post came from a 16-year-old girl, who claims she recently “escaped” her abusive QAnon parents and doesn’t know whether to get the Covid vaccination.

“I don’t know what’s real or not anymore,” she wrote on the Reddit board. “I’m terrified and confused. My parents told me I’d get blood clots, I’d die, be dead within five years, be sterile, microchipped, tracked by the government, controlled by the government etc.” 

QAnon is a far-right conspiracy theory movement that emerged after the 2016 election. Though the messaging is disjointed, members often claim the world is controlled by a cabal of Satanic and cannibalistic elites who conspired against former President Trump.

Mobius, who just entered college and needed the vaccination to attend, said he began to question his family’s views around the time Trump entered office. He got more proactive in seeking the facts, turning to news sources rather than listening to his mom. He landed on the Associated Press and BBC as his most trusted outlets.

Still, Mobius said he tries to avoid talking about anything remotely political with his mom’s side of the family. He said his mom has gotten better about spouting conspiracies since getting sick, though her beliefs haven’t changed.

On QAnonCasualties, divorcees mourn the loss of decades-long relationships, workers talk about leaving their jobs because of a supervisor’s anti-vaccine rants and teens and young adults desperately vent about their parents.

Afraid of ‘vaccine toxicity’

Another member of the Reddit group, who asked to be called Vulture, posted on the board in early August, looking for support and advice on dealing with her mom. 

Vulture, who’s 18 and was only comfortable going by a pseudonym, described her mom as an anti-vaxxer who began diving into the QAnon conspiracy in early 2020, at the start of the pandemic.

She said her mom believes 5G cell phone towers are harmful (one QAnon theory says that 5G causes the coronavirus), and she doesn’t allow her children to have WiFi on at night because she’s concerned about radiation. Vulture said her mom gets her information from Facebook, YouTube, Telegram and even in-person groups. 

Vulture’s parents divorced and her mom is now married to another woman. Her mom’s wife got vaccinated earlier this year, creating a riff in the relationship because Vulture’s mom was afraid she had “vaccine toxicity” and told her wife she no longer loved her unconditionally. 

Vulture said her mom has also threatened to kick her and her younger sibling out of the house if they get vaccinated, a threat that weighs heavily on her, especially as she prepares for her freshman year in college.

Jake A, 33, aka Yellowstone Wolf, from Phoenix, wrapped in a QAnon flag, addresses supporters of US President Donald Trump as they protest outside the Maricopa County Election Department as counting continues after the US presidential election in Phoenix, Arizona, on November 5, 2020.
Olivier Touron | AFP | Getty Images

While teenagers like Mobius and Vulture are finding like-minded people online, groups such as Polarization and Extremism Research Innovation Lab (PERIL) and the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) are trying to protect kids from falling victim to hoaxes and disinformation.

Last year PERIL and SPLC published “A Parents & Caregivers Guide to Online Youth Radicalization,” to help adults deal with teenagers who are at risk of exposure to extremism and conspiracy theories.

“Radicalization is a problem for our entire society, from the innocent people it victimizes to the family bonds it breaks apart,” the guide says. It includes sections on how to recognize warning signs, understanding what drives people toward extremism and how caregivers can engage with at-risk youth.

PERIL and the SPLC also created supplements to the guide for educators, counselors and coaches and mentors.

Seventh grade Alabama teacher Sarah Wildes relies on a tool called Checkology to teach her students how to spot real news and misinformation.
Courtesy of Sarah Wildes

Wildes, the Alabama school teacher, sees a bigger role for the classroom and technology like Checkology in combating the spread of misinformation.

“Once people start going down the rabbit hole, it’s hard to get them out,” she said.

Checkology isn’t dogmatic in its approach, Wildes said. Through interactive lessons, the program is designed to give kids the tools to figure out what’s a hoax and what’s a fact supported by evidence. NLP also puts together a weekly newsletter, The Sift, which is intended to help educators teach students news literacy and to understand why a hoax or conspiracy theory that’s spreading is inaccurate.

Wildes said, based on the behavior she witnesses, that she thinks many middle school kids today are better equipped than adults to reject misinformation.

“I think they really enjoy being spoken to in a way that makes them responsible for their own thoughts,” she said.

WATCH: Former Facebook chief privacy officer on fighting vaccine misinformation

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Joby Aviation says it is doubling production at its air taxi manufacturing hub

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Joby Aviation says it is doubling production at its air taxi manufacturing hub

JoeBen Bevirt, founder and CEO of Joby Aviation, stands near an electric air taxi by Joby Aviation at the Downtown Manhattan Heliport in Manhattan, New York City, U.S., November 12, 2023.

Roselle Chen | Reuters

Joby Aviation is ramping up its manufacturing capabilities in the U.S. as it races to roll out air taxi service in 2026.

The electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) maker said Tuesday that it’s launching production at its remodeled components facility in Dayton, Ohio, and plans to double capacity at its Marina, California, manufacturing hub.

“Reimagining urban mobility takes speed, scale, and precision manufacturing. Our expanded manufacturing footprint in both California and Ohio is preparing us to do just that,” said product chief Eric Allison in a release.

Shares jumped more than 7%, building on a 16% year-to-date gain.

Joby Aviation and competitors such as Archer Aviation and Eve Air Mobility are aiming to roll out eVTOLs worldwide that can ease traffic congestion in crowded city centers, but they are awaiting regulatory approval.

The company is currently in the process of gaining Federal Aviation Administration approval for its vehicles.

Read more CNBC tech news

Last month, Joby Aviation shares popped on news that it delivered its first eVTOL to the United Arab Emirates, with plans to launch service in the region next year. The company agreed to an exclusive six-year deal to roll out air taxi service in Dubai last February.

Joby said the new facilities will create hundreds of new full-time jobs and underscore its commitment to fostering American innovation. At full capacity, the 435,500-square-foot California factory will manufacture as many as 24 aircraft annually.

The electric air transport company also said the opening coincided with the flight of its sixth aircraft.

Engineers from Toyota will help ramp up aircraft production to 500 annually at the Ohio facility. The companies inked a $500 million deal last year.

Shares of Joby and its competitors have ballooned in value this year as interest in the technology gains steam.

In June, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that included the creation of an air taxi testing program.

WATCH: Joby Aviation CEO on UAE delivery: This is a huge milestone for us

Joby Aviation CEO on UAE delivery: This is a huge milestone for us

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Commerce Secretary Lutnick says China is only getting Nvidia’s ‘4th best’ AI chip

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Commerce Secretary Lutnick says China is only getting Nvidia’s ‘4th best’ AI chip

Howard Lutnick, U.S. Secretary of Commerce speaks during the Pennsylvania Energy And Innovation Summit 2025 at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh on July 15, 2025.

David A. Grogan | CNBC

Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick on Tuesday said the Trump administration reversed course on allowing Nvidia to sell its AI chips to China because the U.S. company will not be giving over its best technology.

Lutnick made the remark speaking with CNBC’s Brian Sullivan, saying that Nvidia wants to sell China its “4th best” chip, which is slower than the fastest chips that U.S. companies use.

“We don’t sell them our best stuff, not our second best stuff, not even our third best,” Lutnick said.

Nvidia said Monday night that it would soon resume sales of the H20 chip to China after the Trump administration signaled that it would grant the chipmaker necessary export licenses.

Lutnick said that the administration said that the renewed sale of H20 chips to China was linked to a rare-earths magnet deal. Lutnick said it was in U.S. interests to have Chinese companies using American technology so they continue to use an American “tech stack.”

“The fourth one down, we want to keep China using it,” Lutnick said. “We want to keep having the Chinese use the American technology stack, because they still rely upon it.”

Similarly, Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang has said in recent weeks that the U.S. should continue selling his chips to China so Chinese companies don’t invest in homegrown infrastructure. Huang on Sunday also said that the Chinese military wouldn’t use Nvidia chips anyway, and previously signaled that China’s Huawei is a legitimate competitor.

“The idea is the Chinese are more than capable of building their own,” Lutnick said. “You want to keep one step ahead of what they can build, so they keep buying our chips.”

The reversal is a major win for Nvidia. Huang had previously said that the Trump administration’s decision to require a license for the H20 chip in April “effectively closed” the China market. Nvidia said that it could have sold $8 billion in H20 chips in the current quarter before sales were stopped.

Commerce Sec. Howard Lutnick on Indonesia trade deal: No tariffs there, they pay tariffs here

The administration reversed its decision after President Donald Trump met with Huang in Washington last week.

“You want to sell the Chinese enough that their developers get addicted to the American technology stack,” Lutnick said. “That’s the thinking.”

The H20 chip was introduced in 2022 in response to Biden administration export controls. It’s based on the same underlying technology as Nvidia’s Hopper-generation chips, which are sold in the U.S. as finished systems using H100 or H200 chips.

The U.S. chipmaker took some features out of the H20 in order to sell it to China, including fewer graphics processing unit cores and lower bandwidth connecting separate parts of the chip. But the success of the DeepSeek R1 model suggested that there were many Chinese companies that were just fine with the slowed-down chips. The China-specific H20 is behind Nvidia’s Blackwell chips, the H100 and the H200, Lutnick said.

Nvidia says that it releases new artificial intelligence chips every year and that serious AI developers should always try to get the latest and greatest versions because the technology is improving so quickly.

The best AI chips broadly available from clouds and system makers today are called Blackwell, and come as a GB200 chip with a paired central processing unit as well as B100 and B200 versions. Nvidia also makes a range of Blackwell-based chips for gaming and graphics that can be used for AI, but they’re generally weaker than the biggest chips designed for data centers.

A successor, called Blackwell Ultra, is only now starting to be installed in data centers, and it’s expected to ramp in volume over the next year. In 2027, Nvidia will release “Vera Rubin” chips.

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It’s a huge week for crypto in D.C. But the industry may not get everything it wants

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It's a huge week for crypto in D.C. But the industry may not get everything it wants

The U.S. Capitol building in Washington, D.C., U.S., June 27, 2025.

Elizabeth Frantz | Reuters

It’s “Crypto Week” in Washington.

The cryptocurrency industry is set to notch a major win this week if the House can pass two bills that would set up a long-lobbied-for regulatory framework for digital assets.

The stablecoin bill, known as the GENUIS Act, has already passed the Senate and looks set to become the first standalone crypto measure signed into law should the House do the same.

But the real prize for the industry is a wider and more complex bill on market structure called the CLARITY Act, which faces a more difficult path to President Donald Trump‘s desk.

Seeking CLARITY

The CLARITY Act sets the rules for when an asset is considered a security and overseen by the Securities and Exchange Commission versus when it’s considered a commodity that is overseen by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, or CFTC.

The act is likely to pass the House on Wednesday, given the bipartisan support when the bill cleared two committees. But the path in the Senate is murky, as Democrats could withhold their support over concerns about how Trump and his family are benefiting from crypto.

The Trump family’s growing crypto empire includes $TRUMP and $MELANIA meme coins, a stablecoin, and a decentralized finance firm called World Liberty Financial, among other ventures.

Some lawmakers who backed the narrower stablecoin bill did so with the hopes of seeing the wider market structure package address conflicts of interest.

“President Trump’s crypto corruption distorts the digital asset marketplace,” said Sen. Raphael Warnock, D-Ga., who voted for the stablecoin bill. “Writing a bill with a corruption caveat for the president sends a clear message — that Congress is not serious about addressing corruption, which we know undermines investors’ faith in capital markets.”

Pushing it to pass

Coinbase attempted to literally sweeten the deal on the CLARITY Act for lawmakers with an advertising push that included handing out about 5,000 chocolate bars around D.C.

The candy wrappers cited a Morning Consult poll that found about “1 in 5” Americans own crypto.

Coinbase, Ripple and other crypto companies are lobbying Congress to put their concerns aside and back the market structure package, anticipating that more regulatory certainty will encourage more investment in crypto.

“When consumers buy and sell and trade these digital assets, they want to know what they’re getting and they want to know that they’re using a reputable intermediary,” Coinbase Vice President of U.S. Policy Kara Calvert told CNBC. “And what this bill does is provide that construct to do that.”

Read more CNBC tech news

The Senate is set to introduce its own market structure bill this month that is expected to differ slightly from the House version.

Senate Banking Chair Tim Scott, R-S.C., is working with Sen. Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo., and others on the measure.

Other Democrats are planning to work with Republicans on a bill, including Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-N.Y., who worked on previous market structure bills with Lummis.

“We have a lot of work to do, and we’re going to work on a bipartisan basis over the next month,” she told CNBC in a brief interview in the Capitol.

GENIUS and the Fed

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