On September 2, 2026, a group of tobacco product manufacturers and retailers filed a complaint in federal court, the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Texas, challenging the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s (FDA) 2021 premarket tobacco product application (PMTA) rule. Plaintiffs take aim at a regulation they say has made it virtually impossible for the FDA to authorize new tobacco products within the timeline Congress set more than 15 years ago. The case raises fundamental questions about whether a federal agency can adopt a regulatory process that, by design, cannot meet its own statutory deadlines.

On August 31, the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) executed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) establishing a formal framework for sharing nonpublic information between the two agencies. The MOU takes effect immediately upon signature and reflects a significant step toward coordinated regulatory and enforcement activity at the intersection of public health and financial markets.

On August 14, 2026, Corteva, Inc. agreed to pay $3.1 million to settle an antitrust lawsuit brought by the Arkansas attorney general (AG) alleging that the pesticide maker’s rebate and loyalty programs functioned as de facto exclusive dealing arrangements that suppressed competition from generic pesticide manufacturers.

  • Governor Gavin Newsom appointed former CFPB Director Rohit Chopra as inaugural secretary of California’s new Business and Consumer Services Agency (BCSA) on May 12, 2026, with the agency launching July 1, 2026.
  • The BCSA does not expand the DFPI’s statutory authority under the California Consumer Financial Protection Law (CCFPL), but Chopra’s role as
…

In July 2026, OpenAI released an experimental AI cybersecurity model for internal testing. The model allegedly gained unauthorized access to several computer networks, resulting in an attack on Hugging Face, a widely used open-source AI platform that offers computation tools for building applications for machine learning. OpenAI’s model was allegedly attempting to access a repository that included answers to tests that OpenAI previously asked the model to solve. OpenAI decommissioned the model and suspended related training activities, but the incident drew swift scrutiny from state regulators.

The alcoholic beverage industry has always been a visual business. A sun-drenched vineyard on a wine label, the amber glow of whiskey in a crystal tumbler, a frosted pint glass beading with condensation — these images are the currency of alcohol marketing. Now, artificial intelligence (AI) can generate all of them in seconds, at a fraction of the cost of a traditional photo shoot.

This article was originally published on Law360 and is republished here with permission as it originally appeared on August 21, 2026.

On July 30, two federal appeals courts permitted the enforcement of state laws in Iowa and North Carolina conditioning the sale of electronic nicotine delivery systems, or ENDS, on a manufacturer’s certification of compliance with U.S. Food and Drug Administration premarket review requirements.[1]