Social Security is going broke. Where is the outrage?

Social Security is going broke. Where is the outrage?

Jason Furman writes: The first major public policy issue I worked on in the White House, almost 30 years ago, was President Bill Clinton’s call to “save Social Security first.” Though the fund wasn’t projected to run dry for another three decades, the country seemed gripped by the issue. A few years later, George W. Bush felt strongly enough about the looming crisis that he spent much of his political capital pushing a strategy to resolve it. This week the…

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A Peter Thiel-backed tribunal is putting journalists on trial. I’m its first target

A Peter Thiel-backed tribunal is putting journalists on trial. I’m its first target

Gary Baum writes: For many journalists, blowback is just part of the business. The irate call to the editor or publisher, often expressed through the promise of litigation. The online pile-on, often expressed through personal invective. Occasionally, the threat of violence, often expressed through all-caps derangement. It’s rare to encounter a novel variant. But on April 21, I received a remarkable email. “Someone has filed an objection against something you wrote,” explained Austin Livingston, pointing me to a web page…

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Trita Parsi: So they tried to deport me…

Trita Parsi: So they tried to deport me…

Trita Parsi writes: I have fought the neocons and warmongers in Washington for more than 25 years. Throughout, they have tried to silence, discredit, slander, and cancel me. Only recently, however, have they tried to deport me. At least, that appears to have been the aim of a hit piece in Bari Weiss’s The Free Press, which claimed that Marco Rubio’s State Department was “investigating” me for allegedly seeking to “undermine the U.S.”—presumably because of my opposition to war with…

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Jane Fonda to host First Amendment celebration opposite Trump’s UFC Freedom 250 event

Jane Fonda to host First Amendment celebration opposite Trump’s UFC Freedom 250 event

Reuters reports: As mixed martial arts fighters gather on ​Sunday on the South Lawn of the White House in a cage match to celebrate President Donald Trump’s 80th birthday — ‌a spectacle kicking off a series of events commemorating the nation’s 250th anniversary — actor and activist Jane Fonda will sponsor entertainment of a different sort from New York City. Fonda’s advocacy group, Committee for the First Amendment, will host a concert featuring actors, musicians and public figures appearing in…

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Trump is taking aim at forest and wildfire research just as the West is poised to burn

Trump is taking aim at forest and wildfire research just as the West is poised to burn

NPR reports: Few public universities get more federal research funding than the University of Washington. So as President Trump has already cancelled or suspended about a quarter of all funding for the National Science Foundation and National Institutes for Health, the atmosphere on this leafy Seattle campus is tense. White House Office of Management and Budget Director Russell Vought appears before the House Budget Committee at the U.S. Capitol on April 15. The budget office recently proposed a rule change…

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The Constitution promises an interpreter for fair trials – U.S. courts often can’t deliver

The Constitution promises an interpreter for fair trials – U.S. courts often can’t deliver

A court interpreter checks the day’s schedule of assignments. AP Photo/Brennan Linsley By Carol Rose Little, University of Oklahoma In northern Oregon, just before dawn in October 2025, Immigration and Customs Enforcement officers arrested and shackled two farmworkers on their way to work. The man and woman were Guatemalan citizens who spoke no English and very little Spanish. They spoke Mam, an Indigenous Mayan language. Despite the man trying to tell an ICE officer as much, he was not provided…

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Nick Land’s philosophy of accelerationism and the no-human future

Nick Land’s philosophy of accelerationism and the no-human future

Vincent Lê writes: It surfaces in terrorism reports and tech presentations, in the manifestos of mass shooters and the public declarations of billionaires. What is ‘accelerationism’? Over the past decade, especially the past few years, this term has migrated from the dark corners of the internet into mainstream politics and culture – and in the process has split into two dominant forms that could not be more contradictory. One group of accelerationists dreams of burning down the world and building…

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The storage tanks in Cushing, Oklahoma, are hitting bottom. The oil market is about to hit a tipping point

The storage tanks in Cushing, Oklahoma, are hitting bottom. The oil market is about to hit a tipping point

CNN reports: Cushing, Oklahoma, dubs itself the pipeline crossroads of the world. The tagline is emblazoned on a giant roadside sign fashioned out of pipes on the corner of Main Street and South Stiles Road. It has a valve and everything. But it’s not just a slogan. In 1912, Tom Slick (his real name) was passing through what’s now Drumright, Oklahoma, when he smelled oil. He bought the land for $1 an acre and started digging, uncovering what was then…

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UAE to unlock billions of dollars for Iran, sources say

UAE to unlock billions of dollars for Iran, sources say

Reuters reports: The United Arab Emirates has agreed to unlock billions of dollars for Iran, four sources said, ​in a tactical shift after weeks of Iranian attacks on the wealthy Gulf Arab state during the U.S.-Israeli war with the Islamic Republic. Word of the move, which has not ‌been previously reported, coincides with the final stages of broader negotiations between Tehran and Washington on ending the war, talks that diplomats say could involve the release of tens of billions of…

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Democrats should be on the front lines of the data center resistance

Democrats should be on the front lines of the data center resistance

Tressie McMillan Cottom writes: Americans hate data centers. They really, really hate them. A Gallup poll from May found that 71 percent of Americans would oppose a data center being built in their area. In rural communities in Utah and North Carolina, regular people are organizing to stop data center construction, speaking out at public hearings and pressuring politicians for bans. They are passionate enough to attend political education sessions about water rights, land use and thermodynamics. Cities like Tulsa,…

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After SpaceX’s huge IPO, Americans’ financial future will be bound to AI

After SpaceX’s huge IPO, Americans’ financial future will be bound to AI

Eduardo Porter writes: Americans are growing worried about what artificial intelligence portends for their futures. Eight in 10 Americans report concern over AI, compared with a third who report being excited, according to a recent Quinnipiac poll. More than half think it will do more harm than good in their daily lives. Seven out of 10 think it will reduce the number of available jobs. Skeptical though they may be, they are about to get more AI rammed down their…

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Active Clubs, a white supremacist youth group, helped orchestrate the Belfast riots

Active Clubs, a white supremacist youth group, helped orchestrate the Belfast riots

Wired reports: Within an hour after a horrific knife attack took place in Belfast on Monday night, far-right UK activist Tommy Robinson had shared a video of the incident on X, a post that racked up 6 million views. Within hours Elon Musk, the owner of the platform, weighed in, agreeing with a post calling for “consequences” for politicians. By Tuesday morning, supercharged by X, the video was everywhere, and groups on Facebook were organizing protests across Northern Ireland and…

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The Silicon Valley elites who believe their political power should match their financial might

The Silicon Valley elites who believe their political power should match their financial might

The American Prospect reports: According to Zack Rosen, founder of California YIMBY and the Abundance Network, the problem with politics is Americans being too involved. Bemoaning the rise of small-dollar political donations in fundraising documents leaked to the Prospect, Rosen is blunt: “Small dollar internet fundraising makes politics dumber.” Rosen misses what he considers to be a bygone era of elite dominance. Lamenting the current state of democratized influence, Rosen says “the old gatekeepers were political professionals who could count…

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The Gulf Stream suddenly moved north during an ancient cold snap – and it’s a warning for our future

The Gulf Stream suddenly moved north during an ancient cold snap – and it’s a warning for our future

The Gulf Stream shifts warm water across the Atlantic to Europe. NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center Scientific Visualization Studio, CC BY-SA By Alice Carter-Champion, Royal Holloway, University of London; Fangjingcheng Zhu, University of Southampton, and Jack Wharton, UCL Around 13,000 years ago, as the world was emerging from the grip of the last ice age, much of the North Atlantic region plunged back into near-glacial conditions. Sea ice expanded across the North Atlantic, reaching as far south as the Shetland Islands….

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