Bessent privately urges caution as Trump attacks Federal Reserve Chair Powell

Bessent privately urges caution as Trump attacks Federal Reserve Chair Powell

Politico reports: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent has repeatedly cautioned White House officials that any attempt to fire Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell would risk destabilizing financial markets, according to two people close to the White House granted anonymity to share details of private discussions. Bessent’s private message reinforces what President Donald Trump already knows but comes as the president’s anger with the Fed chair is growing because Powell hasn’t shown signs that he will cut interest rates soon. It also…

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The Ivy League resistance against the Trump regime is just getting started

The Ivy League resistance against the Trump regime is just getting started

Politico reports: Leaders who once helmed the nation’s most prestigious universities are homing in on a message for their successors: resist, defend and litigate. That formula, they argue, is the only way to survive an administration eager to extract fundamental concessions from schools that go far beyond addressing stated concerns about antisemitism. In the three months since returning to the White House, President Donald Trump has demanded that some of these private institutions end diversity programming, change admissions requirements, toughen…

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A Columbia peace activist trod the Middle Way on Gaza. Then he got snatched by ICE

A Columbia peace activist trod the Middle Way on Gaza. Then he got snatched by ICE

The New York Times reports: As Columbia University’s student protest movement careened toward the center of the nation’s political discourse last year, one of its most ardent leaders suddenly fell quiet. Mohsen Mahdawi had been a key organizer of pro-Palestinian demonstrations, but he said he walked away from that role in March 2024 — well before the rallies reached a fever pitch as students set up encampments and broke into a campus building. A fissure had been growing. By the…

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The manipulative tactics Elon Musk uses to manage his ‘legion’ of babies and their mothers

The manipulative tactics Elon Musk uses to manage his ‘legion’ of babies and their mothers

The Wall Street Journal reports: Ashley St. Clair wanted to prove that Elon Musk was the father of her newborn baby. But to ask the billionaire to take a paternity test, the right-wing social-media influencer had to go through Musk’s longtime fixer, Jared Birchall. “I don’t want my son to feel like he’s a secret,” St. Clair told Birchall in a two-hour phone call in December. Birchall offered St. Clair some advice. His boss was a “very big-hearted, kind and…

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Distant planet might be brimming with life, astronomers suggest

Distant planet might be brimming with life, astronomers suggest

The New York Times reports: The search for life beyond Earth has led scientists to explore many suggestive mysteries, from plumes of methane on Mars to clouds of phosphine gas on Venus. But as far as we can tell, Earth’s inhabitants remain alone in the cosmos. Now a team of researchers is offering what it contends is the strongest indication yet of extraterrestrial life, not in our solar system but on a massive planet, known as K2-18b, that orbits a…

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Wajahat Ali and Norman Ornstein: The contempt of a fascist regime

Wajahat Ali and Norman Ornstein: The contempt of a fascist regime

  Norman Ornstein: “Every student of history — of the history of the growth of tyranny — said over and over again: you need immediate resistance. And the strongest resistance from every entity in the society — from the business community, from the education community, the intellectual community, the scientific community, the press community, the elected officials — have to resist. And if you don’t do it right from the start, they will gobble up more territory until it’s too…

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How Harvard ended up leading the university fight against Trump

How Harvard ended up leading the university fight against Trump

The Wall Street Journal reports: Harvard University has drawn a line in the sand against the Trump administration and its sweeping demands for cultural change. Now it is counting on its peer institutions for backup. In Washington, Republicans say the nation’s wealthiest and oldest university has just made a serious error in judgment and is about to learn the cost of crossing Trump. The collision between the president and America’s most iconic university had barely begun when it immediately escalated….

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The U.S. is in a weak position in the China trade war

The U.S. is in a weak position in the China trade war

Politico reports: The White House says it has the upper hand in its trade war with China. Its actions suggest otherwise. Top administration officials spent the weekend trying to defend a carve-out of consumer electronics from the astronomical 145 percent tariffs it levied on China last week. The carve-out was neither an exemption nor a policy rollback, the White House argued, because those electronics are still subject to a separate 20 percent tariff on China and some electronic components could…

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Trump’s D.C. U.S. attorney pick, Ed Martin, appeared on Russian state media over 150 times

Trump’s D.C. U.S. attorney pick, Ed Martin, appeared on Russian state media over 150 times

The Washington Post reports: Hours before President Donald Trump announced U.S. missile strikes on Syria in response to a chemical attack that killed 90 civilians in April 2017, Ed Martin said on the Russian state television network RT America that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad might not be to blame. Instead, Martin told viewers, the situation was “engineered” in Washington “by the people that want war in Syria.” In early 2022, Martin told an interviewer on the same arm of RT’s…

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Members of leading British Jewish body condemn Israel’s latest actions in Gaza

Members of leading British Jewish body condemn Israel’s latest actions in Gaza

The Guardian reports: Members of the Board of Deputies, the largest body representing British Jews, have said they can no longer “turn a blind eye or remain silent” over the war in Gaza. In a significant break with the board’s customary support for the Israeli government, the 36 signatories to an open letter published in the FT say “Israel’s soul is being ripped out”. Since the war began after the terrorist atrocities committed by Hamas against Israelis on 7 October…

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Tesla accused of hacking odometers to rip off customers

Tesla accused of hacking odometers to rip off customers

Futurism reports: Tesla has been accused of manipulating the odometers in its cars to avoid repair responsibilities and warranty agreements. As The Street reports, a class-action lawsuit filed in February claims that Tesla has been trying to dodge warranty-related obligations by intentionally overstating the distances its vehicles travel. The plaintiff, a man in California who bought a used 2020 Model Y with 36,772 miles, noticed an “abnormal spike in average daily miles driven” — despite a “consistent driving routine” —…

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Sunscreen, clothes and caves may have helped Homo sapiens survive magnetic pole shift 41,000 years ago

Sunscreen, clothes and caves may have helped Homo sapiens survive magnetic pole shift 41,000 years ago

University of Michigan: Ancient Homo sapiens may have benefited from sunscreen, tailored clothes and the use of caves during the shifting of the magnetic North Pole over Europe about 41,000 years ago, new University of Michigan research shows. These technologies could have protected Homo sapiens living in Europe from harmful solar radiation. Neanderthals, on the other hand, appear to have lacked these technologies and disappeared around 40,000 years ago, according to the study, published in Science Advances and led by…

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The flimsy basis of Abrego Garcia’s alleged ties to MS-13

The flimsy basis of Abrego Garcia’s alleged ties to MS-13

Roger Parloff reports: In multiple filings, the government has conceded that it wrongfully removed Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia from the United States to a notorious prison for terrorists in El Salvador on March 15. On April 7, accordingly, the U.S. Supreme Court ordered—with no recorded dissents—that the government “facilitate” his return. But rather than try to right its wrong, the Trump administration has, for weeks, been resisting bringing him back and downplaying the gravity of its error. Both strategies have hinged on the administration’s dubious…

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Trump claims Abrego Garcia’s fate is outside his control. The case of Muneer Subaihani proves otherwise

Trump claims Abrego Garcia’s fate is outside his control. The case of Muneer Subaihani proves otherwise

The New York Times reports: In August 2018, during President Trump’s first term, an Iraqi immigrant named Muneer Subaihani went missing. A refugee who had been living in the United States for nearly 25 years, Mr. Subaihani was among hundreds of Iraqis who had been protected from deportation under a federal court order. His lawyers figured he was still in the custody of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, where he had been placed after he was swept up in an ICE…

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