Steve Witkoff’s other backer in his unlikely diplomatic ascent: Vladimir Putin

Steve Witkoff’s other backer in his unlikely diplomatic ascent: Vladimir Putin

The Wall Street Journal reports: Steve Witkoff, a billionaire real-estate developer and longtime golfing partner of Donald Trump, was just days into his job as the new president’s special envoy to the Middle East when he received a tantalizing message from the crown prince of Saudi Arabia. Vladimir Putin was interested in meeting Witkoff—so interested that he might consider releasing an American prisoner to him. The invitation came from a Kremlin moneyman named Kirill Dmitriev, using the de facto Saudi…

Read More Read More

Trump is so sharp he can spot the difference between a hippopotamus and a giraffe, he claims

Trump is so sharp he can spot the difference between a hippopotamus and a giraffe, he claims

The Independent reports: President Donald Trump once again boasted about having “aced” three cognitive tests in wide-ranging remarks. As concerns around the 79-year-old president’s health and mental fitness continue to mount — particularly after his rambling speech earlier this week, apparently falling asleep at several events including a Cabinet meeting, and his controversial Truth Social post about late filmmaker Rob Reiner — Trump reminded a North Carolina crowd on Friday that he’s “aced” several cognitive exams and is in “perfect…

Read More Read More

Trump-appointed judge threatens to hold government in contempt over ICE detainee living conditions

Trump-appointed judge threatens to hold government in contempt over ICE detainee living conditions

The New Republic reports: A Trump-appointed judge was so upset with the living conditions in which ICE detained an immigrant in Long Island, New York, that he threatened to hold the government in contempt. U.S. District Judge Gary Brown, who was appointed by Trump in 2019, issued a 24-page ruling Thursday vehemently castigating the Department of Homeland Security for refusing to provide photos of a holding room that illegally held a noncitizen for multiple nights, calling it “putrid and cramped.”…

Read More Read More

Trump’s fraudulent pardons wipe out payments to defrauded victims

Trump’s fraudulent pardons wipe out payments to defrauded victims

The Washington Post reports: By the time a federal judge in 2023 sentenced convicted fraudster Trevor Milton to four years in prison, Salt Lake City businessman Liejo Supoto had long given up hope of recovering the more than $100,000 he had invested in Milton’s hydrogen-powered truck company. Supoto didn’t know that a federal law requires certain criminal offenders to pay what’s called restitution to compensate their victims for losses. In Milton’s case, prosecutors argued that the former CEO of Nikola…

Read More Read More

Trump moves to denaturalize American citizens, end birthright citizenship, and halt visa lottery

Trump moves to denaturalize American citizens, end birthright citizenship, and halt visa lottery

  The Trump administration is ramping up efforts to strip more naturalized immigrants of their U.S. citizenship, with The New York Times reporting that officials are seeking 100 to 200 cases per month. The news comes less than two weeks after the Supreme Court agreed to hear a case to decide the constitutionality of President Trump’s executive order aiming to end birthright citizenship.

The high cost of rolling over on immigration

The high cost of rolling over on immigration

G. Elliott Morris writes: In March 2025, the Trump administration illegally deported Kilmar Abrego Garcia — a resident of Maryland — to a prison camp for accused gang members and terrorists in El Salvador. The deportation of Abrego Garcia instantly became one of the clearest, most concrete examples of what Trump’s “mass deportations now!” immigration policy would look like in practice. Abrego Garcia was legally protected from removal to El Salvador, had been living in the U.S. without any criminal…

Read More Read More

People are getting their news from AI – and it’s altering their views

People are getting their news from AI – and it’s altering their views

When a bot brings you the news, who built it and how it presents the information matter. Zentangle/iStock via Getty Images By Adrian Kuenzler, University of Denver; University of Hong Kong Meta’s decision to end its professional fact-checking program sparked a wave of criticism in the tech and media world. Critics warned that dropping expert oversight could erode trust and reliability in the digital information landscape, especially when profit-driven platforms are mostly left to police themselves. What much of this…

Read More Read More

Is Israel’s genocide economy on the brink?

Is Israel’s genocide economy on the brink?

+972 Magazine reports: Since October 2023, Israel has faced a convergence of economic shocks. Tens of thousands of residents have been displaced from border regions in the south and north as a result of hostilities with Hamas and Hezbollah, while hundreds of thousands of reservists were pulled out of the workforce for extended periods, leaving key sectors short-staffed and productivity depleted. Public services, education, and healthcare have deteriorated as state spending was diverted to the war, and almost 50,000 businesses…

Read More Read More

After ruining a treasured and ancient water resource, Iran is drying up

After ruining a treasured and ancient water resource, Iran is drying up

Yale Environment 360 reports: More than international sanctions, more than its stifling theocracy, more than recent bombardment by Israel and the U.S. — Iran’s greatest current existential crisis is what hydrologists are calling its rapidly approaching “water bankruptcy.” It is a crisis that has a sad origin, they say: the destruction and abandonment of tens of thousands of ancient tunnels for sustainably tapping underground water, known as qanats, that were once the envy of the arid world. But calls for…

Read More Read More

‘Don’s best friend’: How Epstein and Trump bonded over chasing and dominating women

‘Don’s best friend’: How Epstein and Trump bonded over chasing and dominating women

The New York Times reports: Jeffrey Epstein was a “terrific guy” and “a lot of fun to be with.” He and Donald J. Trump also had “no formal relationship.” They went to a lot of the same parties. But they “did not socialize together.” They were never really friends, just business acquaintances. Or “there was no relationship” at all. “I was not a fan of his, that I can tell you.” For nearly a quarter-century, Mr. Trump and his representatives…

Read More Read More

Trump regime prepares sweeping crackdown on political dissent

Trump regime prepares sweeping crackdown on political dissent

The Washington Post reports: The Trump administration is embarking on an expansive effort to root out what it sees as rampant left-wing domestic terrorism, raising concerns among some security experts and lawmakers that broad categories of Americans’ political speech could come under surveillance. Thursday marks a first deadline, set this month in a memo from Attorney General Pam Bondi, for all federal law enforcement agencies to “coordinate delivery” of their intelligence files on “Antifa” and “Antifa-related” activities to the FBI….

Read More Read More

Cover-up: Hegseth showcased every deadly boat strike — except for one

Cover-up: Hegseth showcased every deadly boat strike — except for one

David E. Sanger writes: One of the many oddities of the huge buildup of American forces off Venezuela is the speed at which the Pentagon has released short clips of what it has identified as drug boats being struck and destroyed by American missiles — part deterrence, part bravado, and, to the many legal scholars questioning the legality of the operation, part evidence of extrajudicial killings. So it was striking that on Tuesday, just as the Pentagon released three more…

Read More Read More

Threats to judges could lead to a judicial system crisis

Threats to judges could lead to a judicial system crisis

  “The Domino’s pizzas arrived at the homes of federal judges without explanation,” the Times editorial board wrote earlier this year. “The message was clear: We know where you live.” In the Opinion Video above, Esther Salas, a federal district judge in New Jersey, describes the stakes of increasingly frequent threats against members of the judiciary, which, in Judge Salas’s view, are fueled by today’s sharply divisive political rhetoric. If a judge is forced “to think about a safer choice”…

Read More Read More

The people — once dismissed as alarmists — who smelled the fascism all over Trump right from the start

The people — once dismissed as alarmists — who smelled the fascism all over Trump right from the start

Toby Buckle writes: Imagine I sent you back in time to July 2015 with the goal of saving liberal democracy in America. Donald Trump announced his candidacy a month ago, the polls are showing him with a narrow lead, and the media—while noting his extreme rhetoric—are mostly treating this as a fun diversion. You can’t prove you’re from the future, and you’re limited to broadly legal means. Can you persuade enough people to take it more seriously? After all, you…

Read More Read More