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Prime number: Cardinals’ social media followers

“Drippy Pope” was fake, but can “Influencer Pope” become a reality? ABC News took a look at the social media habits of some current members of the College of Cardinals, who will begin the process of selecting a new pope tomorrow.

Cardinal Tarcisio Isao Kikuchi, the archbishop of Tokyo, has a modest Instagram following of around 3,000 but is not afraid to post a selfie. Cardinal Luis Antonio Tagle, the former archbishop of the Philippines, has 642,000 followers on Facebook.

But it’s Cardinal Timothy Dolan, the archbishop of New York, who seems most at home in the digital age. He has almost 300,000 followers on X, where he has been posting videos from around Rome and even some news of the cardinals’ meeting locations leading up to the conclave.

Gustavo Entrala, a former communications consultant for the late Pope Benedict and Pope Francis, said he can’t imagine any of the cardinals are actively “posting for the fact that they want to be elected.” However, the next pope will lead the 1.4 billion members of the Catholic Church, so it makes sense that candidates would want to connect with them.—HVL

Self-driving trucks are on the road

Clear the roads for Transformers whose only form is truck: Self-driving semis are officially making long-haul deliveries in Texas without anybody onboard—an achievement expected to become more common over the next year.

Leading the charge: The autonomous freight firm Aurora is now hauling goods on a popular route between Dallas and Houston without a safety driver present, the company announced last Thursday, following four years of practice runs:

Aurora said it had already logged 1,200 human-free miles.
Its first customers are Uber Freight and Hirschbach Motor Lines.

Savor every chance you get to beg a truck driver to honk their horn. More than 1 in 10 freight trucks you see on US roads will be self-driven in 2035, according to a McKinsey analysis that also pegged a trucking company’s cost-per-mile savings at 42% if it automates an entire fleet. Truckers unions have generally criticized automation as a threat to their job security and public safety, since self-driving vehicles lack federal regulation.

Looking ahead…at least 10 more companies are closing in on their own self-driving truck tech, with most planning to launch commercially by next year, according to Axios.—ML

Defaulted student debt collection is back

Uncle Sam began collecting defaulted student debt yesterday for the first time since imposing a Covid-era pause in March 2020. Borrowers who have missed payments for more than 270 days will start getting their debt deducted from tax refunds, wages, and government benefits, the Trump administration said.

Among the 42 million Americans with federal student loans, a record share have missed payments, per TransUnion:

Over 5 million borrowers are in default, meaning they are at least 270 days behind on payments, and 4 million more are in late-stage delinquency (90+ days behind).
Only a third of Americans with federal loans have been making regular payments during the pause, according to the Department of Education.

Ending up in collections for student loan default is a credit score smasher, with defaulters’ ratings at risk of sinking as much as 171 points, according to the New York Fed, making it more difficult for them to take out future loans and rent housing.

How can you find out if you’ve defaulted?

Borrowers can check their federal student loan status at StudentAid.gov. Defaulted debtors will get an email from the Federal Student Aid office in the next few weeks referring them to the Education Department’s Default Resolution Group.

There are options for anyone with loan trouble, including income-driven repayment programs, consolidating loans to prolong repayment, or getting a loan payment pause through forbearance or deferment.—SK

Trump wants to put a tariff on foreign-made movies

Yesterday, President Trump said he would talk directly with Hollywood officials to see if they were “happy” with his proposal to put a tariff on foreign-made films entering the US. In the meantime, industry players shared their reactions.

What’s happening

On Sunday, Trump announced the tariff in a Truth Social post lamenting the dying US movie industry and saying foreign countries’ tax incentives for film companies amounted to a national security threat. In response, big entertainment stocks like Netflix, Disney, Warner Bros. Discovery, Paramount, and Comcast saw sharp declines yesterday before stabilizing by the end of the trading session.

Why? Investors thought Trump’s plan spelled trouble for the film and TV industry. Netflix, for instance, produces an estimated ~75% of its total content internationally.

The president has a point

From 2021 to 2024, film and TV production spending in the US dropped 28%, according to research firm ProdPro. Tax incentives and lower labor costs have attracted the industry to Canada and overseas to countries like Australia and parts of the UK:

Last year, about two-thirds of the money the UK film industry earned came from US studios and streaming platforms.
Los Angeles just wrapped its worst year in three decades for on-location filming in the city aside from 2020.

There are still a lot of questions…industry experts and analysts say a blanket tariff, as opposed to some kind of federal film incentive, which unions have advocated for, is confusing and could end up harming the industry. For starters, tariffs are usually reserved for physical goods and enforced by border agents. You could put a tariff on DVDs, but it’s unclear what part of the production would get the levy. Some movies are filmed partly in the US and partly abroad, or a film could shoot in the US and then be edited in the UK.—MM