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Category: Politics

Trump family set to profit from Iran war through major drone deal

Trump family set to profit from Iran war through major drone deal

The Daily Beast reports: The Trump family is officially set to cash in on the president’s war on Iran by selling drones to the Air Force. Donald Trump’s elder sons, Donald Jr. and Eric, joined the board of drone-maker Powerus after a golf club company they backed merged with it in March to take it public. Powerus, based in West Palm Beach, the home of Trump International Golf Club, now stands to gain from its links to the first family….

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Pakistan opens up road trade routes into Iran amid Hormuz blockade

Pakistan opens up road trade routes into Iran amid Hormuz blockade

Al Jazeera reports: Pakistan has opened six overland transit routes for goods destined for Iran, formalising a road corridor through its territory as thousands of containers remain stranded at Karachi port because of the United States blockade of Iranian ports and ships trying to pass through the Strait of Hormuz. The Ministry of Commerce issued the Transit of Goods through Territory of Pakistan Order 2026 on April 25, bringing it into immediate effect. The order allows goods originating from third…

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Silicon Valley may summon a permanent underclass through its own market logic

Silicon Valley may summon a permanent underclass through its own market logic

Jasmine Sun writes: Most people I know in the A.I. industry think the median person is screwed, and they have no idea what to do about it. I live in San Francisco, among the young researchers earning million-dollar salaries and the start-up founders competing to build the next unicorn. While Silicon Valley has long warned about the risk of rogue A.I., it has recently woken up to a more mundane nightmare: one in which many ordinary people lose their economic…

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A dark-money campaign is paying influencers to frame Chinese AI as a threat to Americans

A dark-money campaign is paying influencers to frame Chinese AI as a threat to Americans

Wired reports: In an Instagram video posted on April 1, lifestyle influencer Melissa Strahle poses outdoors before an American flag as soft instrumental music plays. “AI lets me focus on what matters most,” she tells her 1.4 million followers. “We need to invest in American-made AI to ensure America leads the way in innovation and job creation.” Strahle labeled the post an advertisement, but she didn’t disclose what organization had paid for it. It turns out the funding came from…

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The Roberts Court is defending white supremacy

The Roberts Court is defending white supremacy

Adam Serwer writes: For the conservative editor and columnist James Jackson Kilpatrick, the Supreme Court decision outlawing school segregation was an atrocity. Brown v. Board of Education, he wrote in the 1950s, was a “revolutionary act by a judicial junta which simply seized power.” He warned in 1963 that the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act would destroy “the whole basis of individual liberty.” And in a 1965 National Review cover story, he argued that in order to “give…

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Supreme Court paves the way for largest-ever drop in Black representation in Congress

Supreme Court paves the way for largest-ever drop in Black representation in Congress

NPR reports: A historic drop in representation by Black members of Congress may be on the way after the U.S. Supreme Court’s landmark decision Wednesday to further weaken the Voting Rights Act. Now that the high court’s conservative majority has reinterpreted longstanding provisions against racial discrimination under Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act, Republican calls for new rounds of map drawing for the House of Representatives have already begun. How much of that redistricting can be done in time…

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Demand destruction: How the Iran war could rattle or break the U.S. economy

Demand destruction: How the Iran war could rattle or break the U.S. economy

CNN reports: At its linguistic core, the two-word phrase “demand destruction” feels severe, harsh, maybe even violent. In practice, that’s not far off: It means that the magnitude of a price shock can be so large, so persistent and so painful that spending behaviors shift – sometimes to the point where they permanently alter the course, the structure and the stability of a sector or an entire economy. Earlier this month, the International Energy Agency warned that in the wake…

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U.S. national debt tops 100% of GDP

U.S. national debt tops 100% of GDP

The Wall Street Journal reports: The U.S. national debt now exceeds 100% of gross domestic product, crossing a once-unthinkable threshold, on the way toward breaking the record set in the wake of World War II. As of March 31, the country’s publicly held debt was $31.265 trillion, while GDP over the preceding year was $31.216 trillion, according to data released Thursday. That puts the ratio at 100.2%, compared with 99.5% when the last fiscal year ended Sept. 30. That figure…

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Iran’s latest AI Lego video reaches out to American people instead of taunting U.S. military

Iran’s latest AI Lego video reaches out to American people instead of taunting U.S. military

Iran’s latest AI Lego video marks a significant pivot. Instead of taunting the US military, it reflects a new chapter in which Tehran will seek peace by reaching out directly to the American people, bypassing the US government. It's a mirror image of the US strategy of the past… pic.twitter.com/wywq3DWsxZ — Trita Parsi (@tparsi) April 30, 2026

Trump’s call to reduce U.S. troops in Germany shocks Pentagon

Trump’s call to reduce U.S. troops in Germany shocks Pentagon

Politico reports: President Donald Trump’s announcement Wednesday that he was considering pulling some U.S. troops out of Germany stunned defense officials, who scrambled to figure out if the president was serious about following through on his threats this time. Trump’s social media post was the first that many had heard of a potential new push to take hundreds, if not thousands, of American troops out of Germany, according to three defense officials. It strongly contrasts a recently concluded monthslong review…

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Trump tells aides to prepare for an extended blockade of Iran

Trump tells aides to prepare for an extended blockade of Iran

The Wall Street Journal reports: President Trump has instructed aides to prepare for an extended blockade of Iran, U.S. officials said, targeting the regime’s coffers in a high-risk bid to compel a nuclear capitulation Tehran has long refused. In recent meetings, including a Monday discussion in the Situation Room, Trump opted to continue squeezing Iran’s economy and oil exports by preventing shipping to and from its ports. He assessed that his other options—resume bombing or walk away from the conflict—carried…

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Iran’s Revolutionary Guard seizes wartime power, weakening Supreme Leader’s role

Iran’s Revolutionary Guard seizes wartime power, weakening Supreme Leader’s role

Reuters reports: Two months into a war with the U.S. and Israel, Iran no longer has a single, undisputed clerical arbiter at the pinnacle of power — an abrupt break with the past that may be hardening Tehran’s stance as it weighs renewed talks with ​Washington. Since its creation in 1979, the Islamic Republic has revolved around a supreme leader with final authority on all key matters of state. But the killing of Ayatollah Ali Khamenei on the first day…

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Trump administration will pay more energy firms to abandon wind farms

Trump administration will pay more energy firms to abandon wind farms

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration will pay energy companies hundreds of millions of dollars to abandon their plans to build two wind farms off the U.S. coast, the Interior Department said Monday, in a repeat of a tactic the government used to cancel other offshore wind leases last month. The firms will forfeit their leases in federal waters for the two wind farms, one of which would have been built off New York and New Jersey and…

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The Supreme Court’s conservatives just issued the worst ruling in a century

The Supreme Court’s conservatives just issued the worst ruling in a century

Richard L. Hasen writes: Wednesday’s 6–3 party-line decision in Louisiana v. Callais will go down in history as one of the most pernicious and damaging Supreme Court decisions of the last century. All six Republican-appointed justices on the court signed onto Justice Samuel Alito’s opinion gutting what remained of the Voting Rights Act protections for minority voters, while pretending they were merely making technical tweaks to the act. This decision will bleach the halls of Congress, state legislatures, and local…

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Tom Steyer could be California’s next governor — and he wants to arrest Stephen Miller

Tom Steyer could be California’s next governor — and he wants to arrest Stephen Miller

Zack Beauchamp interviewed California gubernatorial candidate, Tom Steyer: In the plan you have on your website, there’s a very interesting line about not just arresting ICE agents but imposing criminal liability on “their leaders.” So do you think if you were governor and your policy were enacted that it would be right for California state agents to arrest, say, Stephen Miller if he showed up there and was shown to be responsible for some of these things that you believe…

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Fear and opportunity: Immigration scams surged as Trump’s sweeps lured desperate people to eager defrauders

Fear and opportunity: Immigration scams surged as Trump’s sweeps lured desperate people to eager defrauders

By Naisha Roy, Northwestern University, and Francesca D’Annunzio and J. David McSwane, ProPublica This story was originally published by ProPublica As an asylum-seeker living in the U.S., Jasmir Urbina worried as she watched violence break out amid the military-style immigration sweeps across the country. Then she read about legal residents being arrested at immigration court and wondered when federal agents would set their sights on her city. Urbina had fled Nicaragua in 2022 and legally resided with her husband, a…

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