One company in Austin, Texas, claims to have found a new solution to school shooters. Mithril Defense is designing pepper-spraying drones it says can respond to an active shooter within seconds, inspired by the Ukrainian military’s successful drone program. But some feel adding this technology into schools might bring more problems than solutions.

‘It gives another set of eyes and ears’
The drone program, called Campus Guardian Angel, provides an “elite, onsite safety response capability that works alongside school safety teams, confronting any active shooter threat,” said Mithril’s website. The drones are flown remotely and can reportedly arrive at a shooter’s location in 15 seconds. They “unload pepper rounds and are capable of hitting the shooter at a speed of up to 70 mph,” said The Independent.

The machines, currently being provided to schools in Colorado, Florida and Georgia, are “flown by several of the top drone pilots in the world, and are supported by an elite team of former military operators, law enforcement and first responders,” Justin Marston, the CEO of Mithril, told The Independent. 

Law enforcement has lauded the use of these drones. “It gives another set of eyes and ears of the campus that I can’t see all the time,” Deputy Trevor Autrey, the school resource officer at Deltona High School in Deltona, Florida, told WPTV West Palm Beach. 

‘Some really serious reservations’
Others say the drone program could cause additional safety issues. The drones “might accidentally target a fleeing student instead of a shooter” or “remote pilots, in a split-second decision, might mistake a law enforcement officer for a shooter,” Curtis Lavarello, the head of the advocacy firm School Safety Advocacy Council, said to The Washington Post.

“I have some really serious reservations about the deployment of drones in schools,” Lavarello told the Post. Some experts have argued that “low-tech measures, like simply locking external doors, are just as effective,” said the outlet. 

“These drones aren’t patrolling; they just pop up when needed. So that’s part of the problem,” Tony Montalto, whose daughter died in the 2018 Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting, told WPTV. “We need to focus” on “prevention” rather than “reaction.” 

It isn’t often we can trace a widely-used turn of phrase to a single, inspired genesis. With the mocking “TACO” appellation, we can. Coined in May 2025 by Financial Times columnist Robert Armstrong, the acronym points to President Donald Trump’s inclination to “Always Chicken Out” on his threats and proclamations. Here are some of his biggest TACO moments to date.

‘Liberation Day’ tariffs
The effects of Trump’s 2025 attempt to “remake the global trading system” by “erecting the largest tariff wall around the U.S. economy” in a century are “well-documented,” said Bloomberg. “Markets crumbled and then recovered when Trump delayed and scaled back his original duties” multiple times in the ensuing weeks.

Ultimately, the administration “threatened far more tariffs” than Trump has “carried through on,” said NBC News. Trump’s trade strategy since his Liberation Day tariff rollout has been “rushed and improvisational,” said the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Immigration raids at farms and hotels
“Changes are coming!” Trump said in a June 2025 post on Truth Social that acknowledged “our very aggressive policy on immigration is taking very good, long-time workers away” from key industries. The waffling commitment to his mass deportation raids was an “echo of Trump’s back-and-forth rhetoric on tariffs,” said The Detroit Free Press.

It was a “rare concession” from Trump that his policies were “hurting American farmers and hospitality businesses,” said The New York Times — “industries and constituencies that he does not want to lose.” The message from Trump’s shifting tactics is “clear,” said The Daily Beast. The president’s “commitment to his own anti-immigration agenda cannot withstand pressure from his supporters” to protect “their bottom line.”

Threatening to end Iranian ‘civilization’
In “one of the more bizarre days in U.S. diplomatic history,” Trump’s April threat to Iran that a “whole civilization will die tonight” ended with the president “proclaiming a two-week ceasefire” to the U.S.-led war, said The Washington Post. Trump also announced the start of negotiations based on Tehran’s “10-point proposal,” which was full of “conditions that should be utterly unacceptable to any U.S. administration.” Trump can now “pretend that his bloodcurdling threats coerced Iran into giving up,” when he has “so far given up more than the mullahs did.”

People cool off at a water park amid hot weather in Nanjing, China. Temperatures are soaring to 97 degrees this week, and brutal heat waves across several regions have forced authorities to open heat-relief areas, install water-misting devices and outfit outdoor city workers with air-conditioned uniforms.
CN-STR / AFP / China OUT / Getty Images

Summer is simmering to its end soon, but we still have all of August and much of September to tackle that summer reading. No matter what kind of book you’re looking for, this month has a lot to offer.

‘Etna’
Paul Yoon’s story of a former military dog “attempting a treacherous journey home” during the aftermath of a war “rarely moves in expected ways,” said Library Journal. The author’s “fabulist shading” positions the story at a “nexus of grim reality and hopeful fairy tale, enlivening and devastating readers in equal measure” as they watch the dog “reckon with the all-too-human conclusion that one can’t go home again.” (Aug. 4, $28, Simon and Schuster)

‘Take What You Can’
This touching novel by Naima Coster about the lifelong friendship between Val and Milly follows the pair from when they met in 2004 as the only Black students in a French study-abroad program, to a decade later when they are both mothers. Writing with “sensitivity, candor and insight,” Coster “compellingly tracks the ups and downs of longstanding friendship, motherhood and daughterhood, marriage and career,” said Kirkus Reviews. (Aug. 4, $30, Pamela Dorman Books)

‘A Tender Age’
In Chang-Rae Lee’s seventh novel, a man “looks back on the small wounds and larger traumas of his youth,” said Kirkus Reviews. Jeon-Gi, the narrator, recalls life as a 10-year-old boy in 1976 New York City, a “pivotal time for this son of Korean immigrants.” “A Tender Age” is a “melancholy, emotionally rich story of preadolescent struggles.” (Aug. 11, $30, Riverhead Books)