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On the brink of hurricane season, FEMA ‘is not ready,’ internal agency review shows

On the brink of hurricane season, FEMA ‘is not ready,’ internal agency review shows

CNN reports: Hurricane preparations at Federal Emergency Management Agency have slowed to a crawl, and the disaster relief agency “is not ready” for the June 1 start to the season, according to an internal agency review obtained by CNN. Prepared at the direction of new acting Administrator David Richardson as part of a problem-solving exercise at FEMA, the document outlines the agency’s struggles in recent months and raises a number of red flags ahead of hurricane season, including a general…

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White House seeks revenge against owner of Business Insider for report on Don Jr.’s business interests

White House seeks revenge against owner of Business Insider for report on Don Jr.’s business interests

The Bulwark reports: The Trump administration is sending aggressive signals about launching a potential federal investigation into the company that owns Politico and Business Insider as retaliation for an article scrutinizing Donald Trump Jr.’s business interests. In a Tuesday-night story little noticed outside of right-wing media, Breitbart reporter and Trump administration favorite Matthew Boyle wrote that the White House was furious at German media conglomerate Axel Springer. At issue was a Business Insider story titled “Don Jr. is the new…

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Why the Qataris are happy to dump their hard-to-sell 747 on Trump

Why the Qataris are happy to dump their hard-to-sell 747 on Trump

Forbes magazine reports: The royal family of Qatar, owner of one of the largest private jet fleets in the world, has been quietly getting rid of some of its biggest planes. It may have found the perfect taker for one of its Boeing 747 jumbo jets in President Donald Trump, who has been frustrated with the multi-year delays in replacing Air Force One. While many have speculated that the Qataris have offered Trump the luxurious plane to curry favor with…

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An overlooked cell type orchestrates brain rewiring during states of heightened attention

An overlooked cell type orchestrates brain rewiring during states of heightened attention

Washington University in St. Louis: Researchers at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis have upended the decades-old dogma of how connections between brain cells are rearranged during states of heightened vigilance or attention. The team found that a brain chemical associated with alertness, attention and learning alters brain connectivity and function not by acting directly on neurons, the cells known for their quick transmission of information, but through the work of astrocytes, another, slower-acting type of brain cell…

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Judge Michael Luttig on the end of rule of law in America

Judge Michael Luttig on the end of rule of law in America

J. Michael Luttig writes: The president of the United States appears to have long ago forgotten that Americans fought the Revolutionary War not merely to secure their independence from the British monarchy but to establish a government of laws, not of men, so that they and future generations of Americans would never again be subject to the whims of a tyrannical king. As Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense in 1776, “For as in absolute governments the king is law,…

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The ‘cruel misuse of power to punish and terrorize noncitizen members of the academic community’

The ‘cruel misuse of power to punish and terrorize noncitizen members of the academic community’

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration announced criminal smuggling charges on Wednesday against Kseniia Petrova, a Harvard scientist who was detained three months ago after failing to declare scientific samples she was carrying in her luggage. In a hearing in federal district court earlier in the day, a government lawyer told a federal judge that the Trump administration intends to deport Ms. Petrova back to Russia, a country she fled in 2022, despite her fear that she will…

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Gabbard fires leaders of intelligence group that wrote Venezuela assessment that contradicted Trump

Gabbard fires leaders of intelligence group that wrote Venezuela assessment that contradicted Trump

The Washington Post reports: Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard has fired the top two officials at the National Intelligence Council, weeks after the council wrote an assessment that contradicted President Donald Trump’s rationale for invoking the Alien Enemies Act and deporting alleged Venezuelan gang members without due process. Gabbard removed Michael Collins, the acting chair of the National Intelligence Council, as well as his deputy, Maria Langan-Riekhof, according to a spokesperson for Gabbard’s office. The actions are the latest…

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Multiple Trump White House officials have personal ties to antisemitic extremists

Multiple Trump White House officials have personal ties to antisemitic extremists

NPR reports: President Trump campaigned on a pledge to fight antisemitism. “Antisemitic bigotry has no place in a civilized society,” Trump said at an event in 2024. However, the president’s critics question whether antisemitism may have found a place within his administration. NPR has identified three Trump officials with close ties to antisemitic extremists, including a man described by federal prosecutors as a “Nazi sympathizer,” and a prominent Holocaust denier. The White House did not respond to multiple requests for…

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Orbán’s party proposes Russia-style crackdown on Hungary’s civil society

Orbán’s party proposes Russia-style crackdown on Hungary’s civil society

Politico reports: Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Fidesz party submitted a controversial bill to parliament Wednesday in what critics see as an attack on civil society. The bill, entitled On the Transparency of Public Life, would allow the Sovereignty Protection Office to blacklist organizations receiving foreign funding, including from EU grants, if it deems them a “threat” to national sovereignty. The Sovereignty Protection Office is a government authority established in December 2023 with the power to investigate any groups or…

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AI therapy is a surveillance machine in a police state

AI therapy is a surveillance machine in a police state

Adi Robertson writes: Mark Zuckerberg wants you to be understood by the machine. The Meta CEO has recently been pitching a future where his AI tools give people something that “knows them well,” not just as pals, but as professional help. “For people who don’t have a person who’s a therapist,” he told Stratechery’s Ben Thompson, “I think everyone will have an AI.” The jury is out on whether AI systems can make good therapists, but this future is already…

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Humans are killing helpful insects in hundreds of ways − simple steps can reduce the harm

Humans are killing helpful insects in hundreds of ways − simple steps can reduce the harm

Dragonflies, just like bees and butterflies, face threats that humans can help prevent. Christopher Halsch By Christopher Halsch, Binghamton University, State University of New York and Eliza Grames, Binghamton University, State University of New York Insects are all around us – an ant on the sidewalk, a bee buzzing by, a butterfly floating on the breeze – and they shape the world we experience. They pollinate flowering plants, decompose waste, control pests, and are critical links in food chains. Despite…

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Silicon Valley is bracing for chaos

Silicon Valley is bracing for chaos

Matteo Wong writes: On a Wednesday morning last month, I thought, just for a second, that AI was going to kill me. I had hailed a self-driving Waymo to bring me to a hacker house in Nob Hill, San Francisco. Just a few blocks from arrival, the car lurched toward the other lane—which was, thankfully, empty—and immediately jerked back. That sense of peril felt right for the moment. As I stepped into the cab, Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell was…

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By trying to take control of the Library of Congress, Trump is attacking Congress itself

By trying to take control of the Library of Congress, Trump is attacking Congress itself

Rolling Stone reports: Donald Trump’s administration is attempting a hostile takeover of the Library of Congress — an agency that is part of the legislative branch and functions as its research arm in addition to maintaining the world’s largest collection of books, manuscripts, maps, photographs, and recordings. While the takeover has been framed as part of Trump’s broader purge of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) content, it is the latest effort by the president and his team to subsume the…

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Palestinians in Gaza face widespread starvation, some Israeli officials admit in private

Palestinians in Gaza face widespread starvation, some Israeli officials admit in private

The New York Times reports: Some Israeli military officials have privately concluded that Palestinians in Gaza face widespread starvation unless aid deliveries are restored within weeks, according to three Israeli defense officials familiar with conditions in the enclave. For months, Israel has maintained that its blockade on food and fuel to Gaza did not pose a major threat to civilian life in the territory, even as the United Nations and other aid agencies have said a famine was looming. But…

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