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Category: Politics

Katie Zacharia ousted, capping off a week of remarkable upheaval inside Trumpworld

Katie Zacharia ousted, capping off a week of remarkable upheaval inside Trumpworld

The New York Times reports: The end was nigh after [Katie Zacharia] appeared on Fox News on Thursday night to be interviewed by the president’s friend Sean Hannity, who asked her a few tough questions and treated her with rare skepticism. The reception she got on Friday morning on “Fox and Friends” wasn’t exactly friendly, either. “Do you wish you would have disclosed to the president about the bar and not passing the bar?” one of the hosts, Lawrence Jones,…

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Inside the FBI firings with former acting director Brian Driscoll

Inside the FBI firings with former acting director Brian Driscoll

Michael Isikoff writes: Just days before the U.S. launched the war in Iran last February, FBI director Kash Patel fired five veteran agents who specialized in countering Iranian threats to the U.S. homeland — a move that the bureau’s former acting director Thursday called an “abomination” that has had a crippling impact on U.S. national security. “It’s absolutely devastating,” Brian Driscoll, a highly regarded senior agent who last year served briefly as the FBI’s acting director, said about the dismissals…

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Judge threatens Trump with sanctions to testify in lawsuit he brought against the BBC

Judge threatens Trump with sanctions to testify in lawsuit he brought against the BBC

Bloomberg reports: A judge threatened to sanction President Donald Trump for failing to sit for a mandatory deposition in the $10 billion defamation suit he filed against the British Broadcasting Corp. “The court has admonished plaintiff for his lack of participation to no avail,” US Magistrate Judge Enjolique A. Lett said in a brief order in Miami. “Going forward, the court expects strict compliance with its order, the failure of which will lead to sanctions.” Lett made the comment in…

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Musk approached Trump to slow down Starlink in Ukraine

Musk approached Trump to slow down Starlink in Ukraine

The Telegraph reports: Elon Musk approached Donald Trump with the idea of slowing down Starlink in Ukraine, The Telegraph can reveal. The billionaire tech entrepreneur approached the US president with the proposal to introduce speed limits on the system, which hampered Ukraine’s drone defences, according to four sources familiar with the discussions. One of the sources said Mr Trump “agreed” with Mr Musk’s suggestion, paving the way for the Pentagon to execute the slowdown on Starshield, the military-grade version of…

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Israeli settlers attack Palestinians and Washington Post photographer in West Bank

Israeli settlers attack Palestinians and Washington Post photographer in West Bank

The Washington Post reports: Dozens of masked Israeli settlers attacked Palestinian villagers trying to gather their autumn olive harvest on Friday, setting groves on fire and slinging rocks in a coordinated assault that fits a pattern of accelerating settler violence across the occupied West Bank. Also caught up in the attack was Heidi Levine, a veteran photographer for The Washington Post. Levine, wearing a protective vest clearly marked “PRESS” on front and back, was knocked to the ground, kicked repeatedly…

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What’s wrong with Marc Andreessen?

What’s wrong with Marc Andreessen?

Billionaire Marc Andreessen says he has "zero" introspection, and that the idea itself is a modern invention. https://t.co/6bgxdxvfmt — More Perfect Union (@MorePerfectUS) March 16, 2026 “The unexamined life is not worth living,” Socrates, 399BC Bloomberg Businessweek reports: Marc Andreessen sounded angry. It was May 22, 2024, and he was venting to a table full of President Joe Biden’s officials in the West Wing office of Jeff Zients, then the White House chief of staff. The famed venture capitalist was…

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Team Trump starts forming a circular firing squad

Team Trump starts forming a circular firing squad

Axios reports: President Trump has directed his White House counsel to examine explosive allegations dropped on him Friday in the Oval Office: Former Trump attorney Alina Habba told the president that another one of his top advisers — former Kennedy Center leader Ric Grenell — failed to deposit a multimillion-dollar donation that her billionaire husband made to the center a year ago, according to four senior administration officials and three insiders briefed on the controversy. Grenell denied the accusations as…

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Order to limit Starshield for Ukraine came from inside White House, sources say

Order to limit Starshield for Ukraine came from inside White House, sources say

Reuters reports: The order to limit a satellite system used by Ukraine ​for battlefield communications and drone operations came from inside the White House, according to two US officials and a Western official briefed on the matter. The officials said ‌leaders at the Defense Department received a message that the SpaceX Starshield service for the Ukrainian military needed to be slowed. The officials, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, did not specify who in the White House made the…

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White House press secretary Katie Zacharia was an affiliate marketer for a ‘sort of a pyramid scheme’

White House press secretary Katie Zacharia was an affiliate marketer for a ‘sort of a pyramid scheme’

Wired reports: Since her first appearance behind the podium this week, White House press secretary Katie Zacharia’s past has become murkier by the day. A WIRED review of deleted social media and professional networking profiles has helped clear up at least one mystery. Zacharia’s online resume shows a gap extending from 2013 to late 2023. For part of that time, she worked as an affiliate of Beachbody, a fitness company that ran a multilevel marketing operation she describes to WIRED…

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The EPA is about to give oil and gas companies a huge methane-related gift

The EPA is about to give oil and gas companies a huge methane-related gift

Mother Jones reports: Last week, less than a month after rolling back power plant pollution standards, Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Lee Zeldin addressed an audience of oil and gas executives at the New Mexico Oil and Gas Association’s annual meeting in Santa Fe. The environmental agency was “within days,” he told them, of releasing the draft reconsideration of a major Biden-era oil and gas methane rule. The new proposal would weaken regulations on oil and gas operators to allow for…

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‘I’m a proud Canerican like Neil Young’: Joni Mitchell on U.S. citizenship and her new book of paintings

‘I’m a proud Canerican like Neil Young’: Joni Mitchell on U.S. citizenship and her new book of paintings

Rolling Stone reports: On Tuesday, Joni Mitchell obtained her dual citizenship in the U.S. and Canada — 62 years after living in the States. “I became a citizen so I could vote,” Mitchell tells Rolling Stone. “I’m a proud Canerican like Neil Young.” (Mitchell’s longtime pal became a U.S. citizen in 2020, 54 years after illegally crossing the U.S. border in a Pontiac hearse.) And now that she’s officially an American, Mitchell says she has some work to do. On…

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Trump keeps showering Putin with gifts as Russia strikes U.S. businesses

Trump keeps showering Putin with gifts as Russia strikes U.S. businesses

Axios reports: President Trump is indulging his fondness for Vladimir Putin at a moment of acute political peril, forcing Republicans in the midterms to take cover as he showers Moscow with one-sided concessions. Why it matters: With just three weeks until the election, Trump is rekindling a decade-long, scandal-scarred relationship with a dictator reviled by most Americans — including his own supporters. Driving the news: Since speaking with Putin on Friday, Trump has embarked on a remarkable five-day campaign of…

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Hegseth’s livestream execution finds tech fans. Trump not sure after learning shooter was paralyzed

Hegseth’s livestream execution finds tech fans. Trump not sure after learning shooter was paralyzed

Mother Jones reports: “I have been outspoken on wanting public executions for over a decade.” So said Palmer Luckey, the co-founder of Anduril Industries, a military technology company that sells autonomous drones and software to the Defense Department, Customs and Border Protection, and militaries abroad in a vocal defense of “public and brutal” executions in general, and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth’s plan to livestream the execution of Fort Hood murderer Nidal Malik Hasan in particular. Executions are the “ultimate example…

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‘Tip of the iceberg’: OpenAI bugging suspect has ties to Saudi royal family

‘Tip of the iceberg’: OpenAI bugging suspect has ties to Saudi royal family

CNBC reports: Abdulrahman Alfozan, the Saudi national charged with secretly installing a recording device in an executive conference room at OpenAI, had booked a one-way ticket from San Francisco to Saudi Arabia with his wife and a third family member before his arrest, federal prosecutors told a judge in a newly unsealed court filing. Alfozan “has the means — and will have the incentive — to flee the United States sooner if he learns about this case before he is…

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U.S.-made goods also got more expensive under Trump’s ill-conceived tariffs, new research finds

U.S.-made goods also got more expensive under Trump’s ill-conceived tariffs, new research finds

Fox News reports: Americans aren’t just seeing the price tag increase for imported goods. Thanks to President Donald Trump’s tariffs, they are now paying more for products made in the U.S.A., according to new research from the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. In fact, the research finds that prices for many everyday goods would have fallen last year and into early 2026 without Trump’s tariffs. The findings offer new evidence of how the sweeping tariff policy, a centerpiece of…

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Rising costs push necessities out of reach for nearly half of Americans

Rising costs push necessities out of reach for nearly half of Americans

The New York Times reports: Close to half of Americans are having trouble paying for basic needs, according to a study by the Pew Research Center, as the rising cost of living continues to exact its toll. The financial burden is especially acute for lower-income adults. Nearly three-quarters said they struggled to pay for food, housing, medical care or daily transportation in the past year compared with 13 percent of upper-income adults. About half of those on the lower end…

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