Elon Musk’s climb to extreme wealth while wrecking a civil society is the essence of our broken century

Elon Musk’s climb to extreme wealth while wrecking a civil society is the essence of our broken century

Will Bunch writes: The images coming out of Belfast — the city in Northern Ireland made famous by decades of ethnic violence that came to be known simply as, “the Troubles” — were horrific enough. The sight of cars and homes ablaze and hordes of masked, young men roaming the city streets brought back painful memories for old-timers. “I lost my teenage years to the Troubles,” a shell-shocked, 71-year-old, Paul Sharkey, told the New York Times, after watching a flaming…

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The Big Four accounting firms are selling AI governance while their own reports hallucinate

The Big Four accounting firms are selling AI governance while their own reports hallucinate

Janet Harrison writes: There is something clarifying about a consulting firm publishing a report on AI’s enterprise benefits that itself contains AI-generated hallucinations. That is what happened with KPMG, and it landed on top of a pattern. EY Canada pulled a cybersecurity report in May 2026 after researchers found fake footnotes, misattributed sources, and references to material that did not exist. Deloitte, meanwhile, agreed last year to refund part of an AU$440,000 Australian government contract after errors and fabricated references…

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France’s far-right front-runner rejects Trump’s backing

France’s far-right front-runner rejects Trump’s backing

Politico reports: If Jordan Bardella becomes France’s next president, don’t expect him to be Donald Trump’s man in Europe. The 30-year-old leader of France’s far-right National Rally — and the favorite to replace Marine Le Pen if she is barred from running in 2027 — sought during a 45-minute exclusive interview with POLITICO to put distance between himself and the U.S. president he once openly admired. Trump’s behavior is “not only erratic but also extremely unsteady and constantly shifting,” said…

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Conventional wisdom says climate change is a losing issue. Evidence suggests it actually helps Democrats

Conventional wisdom says climate change is a losing issue. Evidence suggests it actually helps Democrats

Kate Yoder writes: As the midterm elections approach, something strange has happened: Democratic politicians who once talked about climate change as the defining crisis of our time now barely mention it at all. The phrase has begun disappearing from their speeches, social media posts, and podcast appearances. The main exception is Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, a Rhode Island Democrat who has given some version of his “Time to Wake Up” speech on the dangers of climate change more than 300 times…

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Meet Folarin Balogun, the accidental American leading USA’s World Cup charge

Meet Folarin Balogun, the accidental American leading USA’s World Cup charge

Lawrence Ostlere writes: There is little evidence about Folarin Balogun’s political beliefs and we should resist the urge to assign some. But there is a delicious irony in his emergence as the hero of USA’s opening World Cup 2026 game. At a time when Donald Trump’s administration is actively using the tournament to flaunt its strong-arm approach to border control, flexing against fans, players, staff and even celebrated Somali referees, a Londoner of Nigerian heritage seems like the poster boy…

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What ancient philosophy really thought about domestic life

What ancient philosophy really thought about domestic life

Sandrine Bergès writes: Political philosophy – a discipline we trace back to Plato and Aristotle – is reasoning about how we live together in political units. It is about states, government, laws, institutions and citizenship. But it doesn’t have much to say about homes, families, marriage or parenting. The discipline that studies how we live together in family units, as opposed to political ones, used to be called economics, from the Greek oikonomika, or science of the home. This was…

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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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