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Category: Politics

Corporate tax payments plunge as AI feasts on new incentives

Corporate tax payments plunge as AI feasts on new incentives

Politico reports: Corporate tax payments are plummeting even as profits soar. A big reason: all that AI spending. The tech world is pouring oceans of money into chips, data centers, power supplies and other components of the artificial intelligence infrastructure. And that’s eligible for generous tax breaks on investments Republicans included in their 2025 tax cuts. The tax incentives weren’t designed with AI in mind specifically — they’re available for all kinds of business investments. But it’s the tech industry…

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Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas wedding was secretly bankrolled by Russian oligarch close to Putin

Donald Trump Jr.’s Bahamas wedding was secretly bankrolled by Russian oligarch close to Putin

By Justin Elliott, Brett Murphy, Joshua Kaplan and Alex Mierjeski This story was originally published by ProPublica On May 24, Donald Trump Jr. was celebrating in the Bahamas, as scantily clad dancers in stilettos and sailor caps performed for him and his guests. It was the last night of his wedding, a lavish, three-day party held across a pair of ultra-exclusive private islands. A five-tier funfetti cake had been airlifted in from Florida, and helicopters and seaplanes descended on the…

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MAGA is making the world safe for corruption

MAGA is making the world safe for corruption

Anne Applebaum writes: In the summer of 2025, the government of Brazil suddenly found itself in a deep crisis. The Trump administration had unexpectedly imposed 50 percent tariffs on the country’s products, threatening everyone from coffee planters to shoe manufacturers. At the same time, the United States canceled the visas of eight Brazilian supreme-court justices and placed unprecedented financial and travel sanctions on a powerful justice and his family. Many things about this crisis were novel. For the first time…

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EPA expected to remove limits on climate pollution from power plants

EPA expected to remove limits on climate pollution from power plants

The New York Times reports: The Trump administration plans to announce Monday that the United States will no longer limit the planet-warming pollution that power plants pump into the air while burning coal and gas, according to two people familiar with the proposal. The shift by the Environmental Protection Agency would complete the administration’s erasure of the most consequential climate policies of Presidents Joseph R. Biden Jr. and Barack Obama. If the move survives expected legal challenges, it could also…

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Saudi pipeline outage threatens loss of 4% of global oil supply

Saudi pipeline outage threatens loss of 4% of global oil supply

Reuters reports: Saudi Arabia will run out of oil stocks for exports ‌if it doesn’t restart its major pipeline to the Red Sea within days, leading to a loss of up to 4% of global supply, Saudi oil buyers and traders said. A further decline in Saudi flows will worsen the global supply crunch, which has already pushed global fuel prices to record highs, spurred ​inflation around the world and sent U.S. bond yields to the highest levels since the…

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As hostilities flare and oil prices spike, U.S. consumers pay at the pump

As hostilities flare and oil prices spike, U.S. consumers pay at the pump

By Marianne Lavelle September 8, 2026 This article originally appeared on Inside Climate News, a nonprofit, non-partisan news organization that covers climate, energy and the environment. Sign up for their newsletter here. Hours after President Donald Trump predicted on Truth Social that oil prices would fall precipitously once the United States wins its war with Iran, strikes on Saudi Arabia’s oil infrastructure by Iranian-backed Houthis Tuesday caused global oil prices to spike to nearly $100 per barrel. The latest runup,…

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The threats posed by the AI industry are global even if they’re not existential

The threats posed by the AI industry are global even if they’re not existential

Brian Merchant writes: Sam Altman himself drove the narrative of the imminent rise of a super-powerful AI, or artificial general intelligence, to prominence by declaring that the technology he was building posed an existential risk to humanity. This idea is in other words baked into the DNA of modern AI companies and into the products they engineer. It’s also why the industry is routinely accused, by myself and others, of “doom marketing,” ie, using such proclamations and framings to impart…

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Gary Marcus: Two cheers (out of three) for Dario Amodei

Gary Marcus: Two cheers (out of three) for Dario Amodei

Gary Marcus writes: In case you missed it, yesterday Anthropic’s Dario Amodei wrote what may prove to be one of the most consequential essays of the year, if not the decade: 3,500 words on the current AI situation that (at least to some degree) advocates for a “pacing” of AI development, which Sam Altman and Elon Musk quickly endorsed. I agree with Dario that we need to pace the frontier. This has been a primary topic of discussions we've had…

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Obama urges Democrats to move AI oversight to the center of their agenda

Obama urges Democrats to move AI oversight to the center of their agenda

The New York Times reports: Former President Barack Obama warned during a recent private fund-raising event that artificial intelligence technology could be “dangerous” if not properly managed, as he implored Democrats to aggressively develop political and governing agendas to prioritize the issue in the coming years. In his remarks on Thursday, which have not been previously reported, Mr. Obama urged House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Democrat of New York, to assemble a clear framework for a public conversation about A.I….

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Train carrying former British PM and ex-CIA chief may have been targeted in Russian strike, officials say

Train carrying former British PM and ex-CIA chief may have been targeted in Russian strike, officials say

The Guardian reports: A train carrying Boris Johnson and the former CIA chief David Petraeus may have been the target of a Russian drone strike that hit a train engine near the Poland-Ukraine border, according to Ukrainian Railways. Ukraine’s foreign minister, Andrii Sybiha, described the attack as “Putin’s terror knocking directly on the doors of the EU and Nato”. Overnight attacks across Ukraine involving more than 450 Russian drones and missiles killed at least six people and injured more than…

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Houthis’ lightning advance down Red Sea coast is ‘a Saudi-American f**k up of epic proportions’

Houthis’ lightning advance down Red Sea coast is ‘a Saudi-American f**k up of epic proportions’

CNN reports: The desperate pleas for air cover from Yemeni generals started coming mid-morning on Thursday. An advance by the Iran-backed Houthis toward Yemen’s strategic port city of Mocha was in full swing, and backup support from chief ally Saudi Arabia was nowhere in sight. “The Houthis committed everything they had – waves upon waves of fighters … along with their available ballistic missiles and weapons,” a senior Yemeni source attached to their military forces told CNN. The source said…

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Saudi Arabia has few options as it faces mounting threats from Iran and its allies

Saudi Arabia has few options as it faces mounting threats from Iran and its allies

The Associated Press reports: A lightning advance by Houthi rebels threatens a crucial Red Sea shipping route. Drone attacks blamed on Iraqi militias have forced the closure of a major pipeline, and Iran is still disrupting the Strait of Hormuz. It’s a nightmare scenario for Saudi Arabia, and it has sent jitters through global markets. The Saudis’ most essential ally, the United States, has been unpredictable and sometimes unreliable. U.S. President Donald Trump seems reluctant to widen an already unpopular…

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AI is racing ahead of our political system

AI is racing ahead of our political system

Toluse Olorunnipa writes: Politicians have no shortage of ideas about how to rein in AI: a 100 percent federal tax rate on data-center incentives, a pause on all development of advanced AI, new standards to block AI agents from going rogue, a halt to the construction of data centers altogether. The flurry of proposals has been impossible to miss, with both Democrats and Republicans proclaiming that something must be done to avert a disaster foretold by AI insiders. Current and…

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OpenAI agents attacked RubyGems before Hugging Face incident, independent researchers discover

OpenAI agents attacked RubyGems before Hugging Face incident, independent researchers discover

Reuters reports: AI agents being tested by OpenAI attacked software service ‌RubyGems two months before they hacked open-source platform Hugging Face, researchers said, the latest revelation of cyberattacks linked to major AI developers that have spooked the public and spurred calls for tighter regulation. Many incidents where AI agents from developers such as OpenAI and rival Anthropic have hacked or attempted to access external systems have heightened concerns over ​the increasing capacity of AI models and developers’ ability to contain…

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OpenAI IPO will not happen in 2026 amid AI safety fears, Sam Altman says

OpenAI IPO will not happen in 2026 amid AI safety fears, Sam Altman says

Reuters reports: OpenAI will not go public in 2026, Sam Altman said in a Fortune interview published on Saturday, citing safety concerns over artificial intelligence. “I actually think that, given everything happening with safety, right now would be an ill-advised moment to go public, and we don’t feel pressure on that,” Altman, OpenAI’s CEO, told Fortune. Growing numbers of US lawmakers ​are calling for new rules to govern AI systems after dire warnings from two researchers from OpenAI rival Anthropic…

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How Trump wields power to stifle free speech

How Trump wields power to stifle free speech

The New York Times reports: The Justice Department has sent F.B.I. agents to reporters’ homes to serve subpoenas and, in at least one case, flashed a warrant to seize devices. The Pentagon has fired the editor and publisher of its traditionally independent newspaper, Stars and Stripes, and blocked access to other journalists who refused to sign pledges that would limit their reporting. Regulatory agencies are using their powers to pressure media organizations over their content. The administration has stripped funding…

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