Trump can tear down the Statue of Liberty, DOJ argues in defense of White House ballroom

Trump can tear down the Statue of Liberty, DOJ argues in defense of White House ballroom

Politico reports: A federal appeals court panel expressed skepticism Friday about the Trump administration’s view that courts are powerless to stop the construction of the White House ballroom now that the East Wing had been demolished. Two members of a three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit repeatedly pressed administration lawyers about its argument that President Donald Trump’s pet project — now well underway — could not be stopped by the courts even…

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Trump sees incoming acting DNI as ‘less shackled.’ Pulte (‘Little Trump’) will fire lots of intel employees

Trump sees incoming acting DNI as ‘less shackled.’ Pulte (‘Little Trump’) will fire lots of intel employees

The Wall Street Journal reports: President Trump said he wants Bill Pulte, his incoming acting director of national intelligence, to begin firing a large number of employees as part of a shake-up of the U.S. intelligence community. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal on Friday, Trump said he has privately told Pulte that he believes the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, or ODNI, which oversees 18 federal intelligence agencies and units, was “unnecessary and/or too big.”…

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AI Frankenstein: Anthropic urges global pause in AI development, flags ‘self-improvement’ risk

AI Frankenstein: Anthropic urges global pause in AI development, flags ‘self-improvement’ risk

The Wall Street Journal reports: Anthropic is calling for top artificial intelligence labs to weigh slowing the pace of development, suggesting that AI systems are advancing so rapidly that they may soon be able to improve themselves without human intervention in ways that could pose significant societal risks. The ability to slow global AI development would “likely be a good thing,” the company said Thursday in a blog post that disclosed internal data documenting how quickly its most advanced models…

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Starmer accuses U.S. of ‘trying to interfere in our democracy’

Starmer accuses U.S. of ‘trying to interfere in our democracy’

The Guardian reports: Keir Starmer has suggested the US is trying to interfere in British democracy after JD Vance, the US vice-president, blamed the murder of the British teenager Henry Nowak on mass migration. The prime minister’s office responded after the senior Republican politician claimed in a post on X that Nowak would be alive “if the last few generations of European elites had stood their ground against the politics of self-hatred and the mass invasion of migrants, many of…

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How Fox News viewership increases belief in the anti‑immigrant ‘great replacement theory’

How Fox News viewership increases belief in the anti‑immigrant ‘great replacement theory’

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi speaks on Capitol Hill on June 8, 2022, about a resolution condemning the great replacement theory. AP Photo/Manuel Balce Ceneta By Adam Eichen, UMass Amherst; Jesse Rhodes, UMass Amherst, and Tatishe Nteta, UMass Amherst During a Washington Nationals baseball game on May 17, 2026, three people unfurled a large banner from the upper deck of Nationals Park displaying a link to a white nationalist website. The website, warning of the replacement of whites by people of…

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Political anger fuels support for violence mainly when voters feel ignored by the system

Political anger fuels support for violence mainly when voters feel ignored by the system

PsyPost reports: A recent study published in Political Psychology suggests that how political anger influences a person’s support for violence depends heavily on whether they believe the political system actually listens to them. Researchers found that intense anger tends to fuel support for undemocratic practices only when people feel their voices do not matter to politicians. When people believe the government is responsive, this sense of political power acts as a buffer against endorsing political violence. Political discussions in the…

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Oil industry warns Trump administration of price spikes within weeks. White House in denial

Oil industry warns Trump administration of price spikes within weeks. White House in denial

Politico reports: The oil industry is warning the Trump administration that a Hormuz-sized hole in the world’s petroleum market is steadily draining inventories to levels that are likely to send global energy prices surging in the next several weeks, according to four executives. Industry executives have flagged the issue to senior White House officials and Cabinet members in recent weeks as part of the Trump administration’s ongoing dialogue with the U.S. energy industry, the people said. The warnings came as…

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Iran will not give up in negotiations what could not be taken from it in war

Iran will not give up in negotiations what could not be taken from it in war

Thomas Wright writes: A U.S. official told Axios that on Monday that Donald Trump read Benjamin Netanyahu the riot act for wanting to launch strikes on Beirut, which could collapse American negotiations with Iran. The message, the official said, was “You’re fucking crazy. You’d be in prison if it weren’t for me. I’m saving your ass. Everybody hates you now. Everybody hates Israel because of this.” Later that evening, the official White House account posted “TRUST IN TRUMP. ‘Just sit…

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Ballroom ‘donors’ won $50 billion in contracts after giving to Trump project, watchdog group finds

Ballroom ‘donors’ won $50 billion in contracts after giving to Trump project, watchdog group finds

The Washington Post reports: More than half of the publicly identified donors to President Donald Trump’s White House ballroom project have won new or expanded federal contracts worth more than $50 billion during the past six months, according to a report released Thursday by a government watchdog group. Fourteen of the 27 known corporate donors to the $400 million project, which would replace the East Wing that Trump demolished in October, have seen their government business grow in that window,…

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Russia’s elite is souring on the war, but Putin doesn’t seem to care

Russia’s elite is souring on the war, but Putin doesn’t seem to care

The Wall Street Journal reports: Russia’s inability to break through the stalemate in Ukraine is becoming so evident that significant voices in the Russian establishment have publicly started to call for an end to the conflict. The big question is whether President Vladimir Putin will acknowledge this reality and abandon his aspiration to extinguish Ukrainian independence. So far, there is no sign that, in the fifth year of Europe’s bloodiest conflict in generations, he is ready to climb down from…

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60 Minutes hatchet man: ‘Nick’s politics are consistent with a lot of the tech people he’s covered’

60 Minutes hatchet man: ‘Nick’s politics are consistent with a lot of the tech people he’s covered’

Page Six Hollywood reports: Like [Bari] Weiss, it is hard to pin down exactly where [Nick] Bilton falls on the political spectrum. The central tension is that Bilton, who regularly criticized Donald Trump during his first term in the pages of Vanity Fair, now finds himself inside a company that many see as friendly, if not subservient to the Trump Administration. Interviews with friends and former colleagues suggest any political shift within Bilton has been subtle. Sources paint a picture…

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Women take majority of cabinet seats in first for Denmark

Women take majority of cabinet seats in first for Denmark

Bloomberg reports: Denmark’s new cabinet reached a record level of female representation, with women outnumbering men for the first time in the Nordic country. Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen, the first woman to win a third term in her homeland, unveiled a ministerial lineup of 11 women and 10 men, bringing female representation to 52%. “For the first time in Denmark’s history, there are more female ministers than male ministers,” Frederiksen told media on Wednesday as she presented her new cabinet…

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How Thomas Paine spelled out astronomical expectations for a new nation

How Thomas Paine spelled out astronomical expectations for a new nation

Jo Marchant writes: In politics, as in nature, tensions can take years to build, but it takes just one stone to unleash an avalanche, one spark to ignite a wildfire. For many historians of the American Revolution, that spark was a pamphlet of fewer than 100 pages written by a newly arrived English immigrant named Thomas Paine. Throughout 1775, violent clashes between British troops and colonist rebels protesting onerous taxes inspired little talk of outright revolution. Most rebels aimed to…

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Trump ignored warnings about Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz

Trump ignored warnings about Iran closing the Strait of Hormuz

The New York Times reports: In mid-February, shortly before President Trump launched the war on Iran, the country’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps conducted live-fire drills in its coastal waters. Iranian state media publicized the exercise, whose official name made its purpose clear: “Smart Control of the Strait of Hormuz.” The exercise amounted to a flashing red warning light to the Trump administration — one that, for reasons that are still not fully clear, went largely unheeded. Within days of the…

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