Ongoing conflict with Iran amounts to near-total failure in the mission Trump promised

Ongoing conflict with Iran amounts to near-total failure in the mission Trump promised

David Sanger writes: Just two weeks ago, opening the Great American State Fair, President Trump triumphantly declared: “For the first time in 3,000 years, we are going to have peace in the Middle East.” It was typical bravado for Mr. Trump. But the “peace” he was celebrating — the cease-fire with Iran that on Wednesday he declared “over” after less than a month — was already beginning to unravel. The result was perhaps predictable for a 14-paragraph memorandum of understanding…

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Cover-up: Witnesses pressured to self-deport after ICE killing in Texas

Cover-up: Witnesses pressured to self-deport after ICE killing in Texas

Greg Sargent writes: After a federal agent killed an undocumented Mexican man in his van during a traffic stop in Houston on Tuesday, the government rushed to follow a familiar template. Just as it has after other shootings, the Department of Homeland Security released a statement insisting that the man, Lorenzo Salgado Araujo, had “weaponized his vehicle” against the officer, who then justifiably opened fire. DHS offered no evidence of this. But it appears three other people were in the…

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ICE killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. They want you to be apathetic. Don’t be

ICE killed Lorenzo Salgado Araujo. They want you to be apathetic. Don’t be

Will Bunch writes: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo woke up at 5 a.m. Tuesday and started his day like almost every other one for the last 35 years since he came to Houston from Mexico and built his own American dream brick by brick — sending his three sons to top universities on the foundation he’d constructed through years of backbreaking labor. His wife also got up to make him a hearty meal before he put on his work boots, fired up…

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Fed chief picks techno-fascist, Marc Andreessen, to advise on how AI reshapes work

Fed chief picks techno-fascist, Marc Andreessen, to advise on how AI reshapes work

“We believe any deceleration of AI will cost lives,” declares Marc Andreessen in his über-bombastic Techno-Optimist Manifesto. The Washington Post reports: Federal Reserve Chair Kevin Warsh has enlisted Marc Andreessen — the venture capitalist, adviser to President Donald Trump and one of Silicon Valley’s most aggressive promoters of artificial intelligence — to help shape how the central bank thinks about the technology’s economic impact. Andreessen will co-lead a task force on productivity and jobs, one of five advisory panels the…

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Neo-McCarthyism: Rubio tries to enlist other nations in antifa fight

Neo-McCarthyism: Rubio tries to enlist other nations in antifa fight

The Washington Post reports: Secretary of State Marco Rubio has invited senior ministers from more than 60 countries to a meeting next week about what the Trump administration views as a major peril: the “resurgence of transnational far-left terrorism,” according to documents reviewed by The Washington Post. The meeting has prompted consternation among career and political U.S. officials, some European allies and independent analysts who do not see the threat in the same terms. Some U.S. officials told The Post…

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The Democratic influencer who helped bring down Graham Platner and former Rep. Eric Swalwell

The Democratic influencer who helped bring down Graham Platner and former Rep. Eric Swalwell

The Wall Street Journal reports: Behind the stunning downfall of two Democratic politicians this midterm cycle is a 29-year-old lawyer and progressive social media influencer. Cheyenne Hunt played a key role in surfacing serious accusations of assault and sexual misconduct against Maine Democrat Graham Platner and former Rep. Eric Swalwell, the California Democrat who was also a leading candidate for governor. Both men have denied the allegations. Platner ended his Senate campaign on Wednesday and Swalwell suspended his gubernatorial campaign…

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Is life just different?

Is life just different?

Philip Ball writes: In 1993, a team led by the planetary scientist Carl Sagan tentatively concluded that there is life on Earth. Not much of a deduction, you might think — except that the researchers confined their evidence to observations made by the Galileo spacecraft, which had flown past our planet three years earlier on a looping journey to Jupiter. So great is the transformative power of life that its presence can be detected just from the light and radio…

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Iran, not Trump, is in control of this war

Iran, not Trump, is in control of this war

Tom Nichols writes: If Donald Trump ever had any control over the war he started with Iran, he’s lost it. The Iranians are now setting the terms of this conflict and are routinely humiliating the American president. The “cease-fire” Trump declared last month—a move probably meant to both soothe international markets and avert legislative action from the United States Congress—never really existed, because neither side ever ceased firing. The situation is now back to a kind of slow-motion punch-up: In…

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In rush to provide targets, U.S. commanders ignored warnings about outdated intelligence ahead of strike that hit school in Iran

In rush to provide targets, U.S. commanders ignored warnings about outdated intelligence ahead of strike that hit school in Iran

CNN reports: Senior US military commanders bypassed warnings in critical databases that intelligence about potential targets in Iran was severely out of date and approved some strikes — including one that hit a school, killing nearly 200 children and adults, according to three sources familiar with the decision-making process. Messages indicating the intelligence was based on years-old intelligence that needed to be re-vetted were embedded in a system used for developing targets and required a senior officer to approve adding…

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Global economy, hit by Iran war and inflation, faces sharp slowdown

Global economy, hit by Iran war and inflation, faces sharp slowdown

The New York Times reports: The global economy is set to slow sharply in 2026 after the war with Iran disrupted energy supply chains and triggered a fresh bout of inflation, the International Monetary Fund warned on Wednesday. The forecasts reflect the damaging toll from the decision by the United States and Israel to attack Iran this year. Those attacks spurred Iranian retaliation on energy infrastructure in the region, destabilizing a world economy that had already been rocked by the…

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The World Cup is exposing the contradictions of national identity

The World Cup is exposing the contradictions of national identity

Mohamad Elmasry writes: The World Cup always brings to the fore what is sometimes seen as a pure and mostly straightforward form of identity: national identity. But the 2026 tournament has demonstrated, perhaps as clearly as any global event can, that modern national identity is complex, contested and far from straightforward. The composition of the Moroccan World Cup squad offers a useful case in point. Nineteen of the 26 players on the squad were born outside Morocco, many of them…

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He lived here for 35 years. Put three kids in college. ICE killed him

He lived here for 35 years. Put three kids in college. ICE killed him

Adrian Carrasquillo writes: Lorenzo Salgado Araujo came to the United States thirty-five years ago—a few years too late to benefit from the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986, popularly known as the “Reagan amnesty.” He worked in construction. By the 2000s, he was a small business owner who provided jobs and work for other men. They would drive to the North Houston suburbs and build houses. His dream was to build his own home for his family one day—a…

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Trump lashes out at Spain: ‘Cut off all trade.’ Here’s why that’s unlikely to happen

Trump lashes out at Spain: ‘Cut off all trade.’ Here’s why that’s unlikely to happen

The New York Times reports: President Trump, venting his longstanding animus toward Europe at the NATO summit in Ankara, Turkey, singled out Spain with particular spleen on Wednesday. “I don’t want anything to do with Spain,” he said of the European Union’s fourth-largest economy. “Cut off all trade with Spain, please, including visits.” “They’re hopeless, bad people,” he added. Whether Mr. Trump has the desire or the power to follow through on his threat to treat a European ally as…

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History will end up laughing at SpaceX, the ‘craziest IPO in the history of man,’ says famed investor

History will end up laughing at SpaceX, the ‘craziest IPO in the history of man,’ says famed investor

Fortune reports: With Elon Musk’s SpaceX now embedded in the Nasdaq 100, the prospects of the rocket company have–directly or indirectly–now slipped into the stock portfolios of millions of people around the globe. But joining the Nasdaq index has done little to convince critics, who are dubious about the lofty aims of the company. In the prospectus ahead of its offering, SpaceX said its goal is “to build the systems and technologies necessary to make life multiplanetary, to understand the…

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