Music: Dhafer Youssef — ‘Terpsichorean’
Susie Wiles confirms Trump’s ‘war on drugs’ is really about regime change in Venezuela
Chris Whipple writes: During my first visit with Wiles at the White House in November, Trump’s revenge tour against his domestic enemies was in full swing. So was his lethal campaign against Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro, who, Trump was convinced, headed a powerful drug cartel. Over lunch, Wiles told me about Trump’s Venezuela strategy: “He wants to keep on blowing boats up until Maduro cries uncle. And people way smarter than me on that say that he will.” (Wiles’s statement…
Trump orders oil tankers blockade in Venezuela, labels it a ‘terrorist’ regime
Axios reports: President Trump designated Venezuela a “foreign terrorist organization” Tuesday and formally ordered a blockade of all U.S. sanctioned oil tankers servicing the country. Why it matters: Trump’s newest escalation, backed by a giant U.S. armada, exerts unprecedented pressure on Venezuelan leader Nicolas Maduro’s regime, threatening to bankrupt the country’s already struggling economy. “Venezuela is completely surrounded by the largest Armada ever assembled in the History of South America. It will only get bigger, and the shock to them will be like…
Trump’s new National Security Strategy targets liberal democracy itself
Anne Applebaum writes: Last year, a team of American diplomats from the State Department’s Global Engagement Center traveled to two dozen countries and signed a series of memoranda. Along with their counterparts in places as varied as Italy, Australia, and Ivory Coast, they agreed to jointly expose malicious and deceptive online campaigns originating in Russia, China, or Iran. This past September, the Trump administration terminated these agreements. The center’s former head, James Rubin, called this decision “a unilateral act of…
After Bondi Beach shooting, Republicans are calling for a purge of Muslim immigrants
The New Republic reports: MAGA world is calling for a mass deportation of Muslims, following a mass shooting in Australia—ignoring the reality that it was a member of the local Muslim community who intervened and stopped the violence. At least 15 people were killed Sunday in a horrific attack at Sydney’s Bondi Beach. Two men—a father-son duo—allegedly opened fire on a crowd of Jewish Australians on the first night of Hanukkah. The country’s leadership has declared the incident a terrorist…
CoreWeave’s staggering fall in value highlights AI bubble fears
The Wall Street Journal reports: CoreWeave, the largest of a new breed of companies driving the artificial-intelligence boom, has watched $33 billion of value vaporize in six weeks. The share-price plunge of 46% comes as investors worry about a possible AI bubble, the fallout from a failed merger and public criticism from high-profile short seller Jim Chanos, known for predicting the collapse of Enron. But some of the high-tech company’s biggest problems began with a very low-tech nuisance: unexpectedly turbulent…
BBC will fight Trump’s $10bn lawsuit, saying it should be dismissed
The Guardian reports: The BBC is preparing to argue Donald Trump’s $10bn court case against it should be dismissed, arguing it has no case to answer over the US president’s claims he was defamed by an episode of Panorama. The development comes after Trump filed a 33-page complaint to a Florida court on Monday, accusing the broadcaster of “a false, defamatory, deceptive, disparaging, inflammatory and malicious depiction” of the president in the documentary. On Tuesday, the BBC said it would…
Rewilded lab mice, lose their anxiety after a week outdoors
Cornell University: When postdoctoral researcher Matthew Zipple releases lab mice into a large, enclosed field just off Cornell’s campus, something remarkable happens. The mice, which have only ever lived in a cage a little larger than a shoebox, rear up on their back legs, sniff the air, move into the grass and begin to bound over it, a new way of moving and a totally new experience for them. It’s one of many they’ll have as “rewilded” mice, and in…
Music: Dhafer Youssef — ‘The Epistle of Love (Pt. 3)’
Trump’s callous attack on Rob Reiner shows a shameful moral failure
Anita Chabria writes: In a town — and a time — of selfishness and self-serving, Reiner was one of the good guys, always fighting, both through his films and his politics, to make the world kinder and closer. And yes, that meant fighting against Trump and his increasingly erratic and authoritarian rule. For years, Reiner made the politics of inclusion and decency central to his life. He was a key player in overturning California’s ban on same-sex marriage and fought…
Trump officials celebrated with cake after slashing aid. Then people died of cholera
By Anna Maria Barry-Jester and Brett Murphy This story was originally published by ProPublica On the one-month anniversary of President Donald Trump’s inauguration earlier this year, a group of his appointed aides gathered to celebrate. For four weeks, they had been working overtime to dismantle the U.S. Agency for International Development, freezing thousands of programs, including ones that provided food, water and medicine around the world. They’d culled USAID’s staff and abandoned its former headquarters in the stately Ronald Reagan…
John Roberts has been working to neuter the Voting Rights Act since the beginning of his career
David Daley writes: In 1982, when the Voting Rights Act was up for reauthorization, the Reagan Justice Department had a goal: preserve the VRA in name only, while rendering it unenforceable in practice. A young John Roberts was the architect of that campaign. He may soon get to finish what he started. Last month, at the oral argument in Louisiana v. Callais, a majority of the conservative justices seemed to signal their willingness to forbid any use of race data…
The goal of AI development is ownership of the means of thinking
Matthew B. Crawford writes: As near as one can tell, the business rationale for artificial intelligence rests on the hope that it will substitute for human judgment and discretion. Given the role of big data in training AI systems, and the enormous concentrations of capital they require to develop, the AI revolution will extend the logic of oligopoly into cognition. What appears to be at stake, ultimately, is ownership of the means of thinking. This will have implications for class…
‘I didn’t vote for this’: DOGE cuts for public lands are waking a sleeping political giant in Montana
Cassidy Randall writes: The road to the tiny hamlet of Marion in northwest Montana is lined with the thick trees of the Flathead National Forest, with modern homesteads of trailers and modest homes dotting clearings here and there. Outside a timber frame café called the Hilltop Hitching Post, one of the only gathering spots for Marion’s population of less than 1,200, hunter Terry Zink pulled up in a dusty, well-used F-150 pickup and got out wearing a camo jacket against…
People are ditching a life led on screens for the real thing
John Harris writes: If 2025 has had any kind of defining cultural theme, it perhaps boils down to people’s increasing sense that a life completely beholden to screens is no life at all. To this, add two connected trends: a drop in millions of people’s use of social media, and a rising yearning for experiences that are more authentic. This is not, just to be clear, any kind of suggestion that we are about to reject digital technology and wind…
How ‘brain cleaning’ while we sleep may lower our risk of dementia
nopparit/Getty By Julia Chapman, Macquarie University; Camilla Hoyos, Macquarie University, and Craig Phillips, Macquarie University The brain has its own waste disposal system – known as the glymphatic system – that’s thought to be more active when we sleep. But disrupted sleep might hinder this waste disposal system and slow the clearance of waste products or toxins from the brain. And researchers are proposing a build-up of these toxins due to lost sleep could increase someone’s risk of dementia. There…