Netflix sued for secretly harvesting user data

Deep State Tribunal  - Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has filed a bombshell lawsuit accusing Netflix of secretly harvesting user data—including from children’s profiles—and selling it to data brokers for billions, contradicting years of public claims that the streaming giant “doesn’t collect anything.”

The 59-page lawsuit claims Netflix collects viewing habits, device data, and behavioral information, then sells it to data brokers and ad tech firms without consent.  AG Paxton seeks to disable addictive features like autoplay on kids’ profiles, purge collected data, and impose fines up to $10,000 per violation.

Netflix denies the allegations, claiming full legal compliance and “industry-leading parental controls,” but the suit highlights a broader erosion of trust in Big Tech’s promises.

FBI

NOTUS - Kash Patel’s “payback squad”: Inside the FBI is a team of agents willing to pursue political targets set by Donald Trump’s administration. They are tasked with building cases similar to the recent criminal prosecution(s) of former bureau Director James Comey. They’re colloquially known as the “payback squad,” NOTUS’ Jose Pagliery reports, but one of Jose’s multiple bureau sources for the story said the moniker is likely a reference to an effort associated with the Director’s Advisory Team that Patel set up last year.




What they’re up to: The team is building criminal cases that seek to charge former top government officials with a “grand conspiracy” against Trump, Jose writes. They expect their work to soon result in an indictment of former CIA Director John Brennan.

Middle East

The role of Jared Kushner in Iran

Axios - Classified intelligence assessments from earlier this month indicate that "Iran has regained access to most of its missile sites, launchers and underground facilities," the N.Y. Times' Adam Entous, Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan report.

• "The findings undercut months of public assurances from President Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, who have told Americans that the Iranian military was 'decimated' and 'no longer' a threat," The Times notes.

The assessments say there's evidence that Iran restored operational access to 30 of the 33 missile sites along the Strait of Hormuz.  They suggest Iran has retained roughly 70% of its prewar missile stockpile and 70% of its mobile launchers. It has regained access to about 90% of its underground missile storage and launch facilities. MORE

The Congressional Insider -   Israel’s prime minister just floated a once-unthinkable idea: ending U.S. military aid—forcing Washington to ask whether “forever funding” allies has become a default setting instead of a strategy.  Benjamin Netanyahu told CBS’s “60 Minutes” he wants to phase out the financial component of U.S. military aid to Israel to zero over the next decade, starting immediately. The current U.S.-Israel aid framework is governed by a 2016 memorandum committing $38 billion from 2018–2028, including roughly $3.8 billion annually.

As of May 2026, there are no formal negotiations to implement a phase-out, and aid continues to flow under the existing agreement.  The proposal lands amid U.S. domestic frustration over spending, “forever commitments,” and a broader belief—left and right—that Washington’s priorities often serve elites more than citizens.

Co-op grocers

National Cooperative Business Asn -   National Co+op Grocers (NCG) has released their 2025 Food Co-op Impact Report, highlighting how community-owned grocery stores continue to thrive by supporting local farmers and suppliers, offering more organic and responsibly sourced food, and investing in the health and well-being of their communities.

“The report underscores that community owned food co-ops are succeeding by offering a different kind of model—one where shoppers own the store, farmers get more stable markets and profits stay local,” said Allie Mentzer, NCG’s Chief Public Policy Officer for Advocacy & Sustainability.

...NCG food co-ops, which operate 244 stores, experienced sales growth of 6.2% in 2025, more than double the sales growth of the average U.S. grocery store benchmark of 2.9%, according to data obtained from RetailStat.com.

GOP Senators balk at $1B in security for White House ballroom

The Hill -   A proposal to provide $1 billion in federal funds to provide security for a new White House ballroom is in danger of being stripped from a budget reconciliation package after Republicans responded skeptically to the idea.  “I don’t have the details I need to support it. It was one thing when private dollars were building it. If you’re asking me for a billion dollars, I have some really hard questions,” Sen. John Curtis (R-Utah) said before a Tuesday meeting with Secret Service Director Sean Curran.

GOP senators had lunch with Curran in the Capitol’s Mansfield Room on Tuesday as he pitched them on the need to spend $1 billion — substantially more than the ballroom was initially projected to cost — on security enhancements to the ballroom and the White House grounds more generally.

GOP senators said they wanted more details to justify the project, which is now estimated to cost several times more than the $200 million renovation President Trump announced in July.

It's not just blacks who are being targeted

Hartmann Report - The same outfit that wrote Project 2025 and watched the Trump administration follow their playbook virtually to the letter, has been busy assembling a 90-page tract called “Saving America by Saving the Family.”

It maps out a future in which American women are stripped of their right to vote without their husbands’ paperwork, denied access to contraception and abortion, pushed back into the home, and reduced to what Heritage’s new American Citizenship chair Scott Yenor calls the “heroic feminine” of motherhood and wifeliness. It’s quite a Mother’s Day card from the people who claim to revere motherhood the most.

Scott Yenor wants:

— To make gay sex illegal in America again,
— Divorce to be “difficult to get or proscribed,”
— Adultery and sex between unmarried consenting adults (he calls it “fornication”) criminalized, and
— The Civil Rights Act to be “scaled back” so that businesses, schools, and “every other institution in the country” can once again discriminate against women, queer people, and minorities the way they used to.

And just a few months ago, the Heritage Foundation, the same outfit that wrote Project 2025 and watched the Trump administration follow their playbook virtually to the letter, hired Yenor to chair its American Citizenship Initiative.

New York City

The Congressional Insider -   New York City public schools are on track to lose 153,000 students over the next decade, draining the tax base while spending skyrockets to $42,000 per pupil—yet graduation rates have plummeted to a 20-year low.

Per-pupil spending surged 35% to $42,000 annually, while high school graduation rates fell to 81%, the lowest in two decades. Brooklyn, Queens, and the Bronx lost a combined 123,000 students since 2019-20, with families fleeing to Florida and New Jersey. Critics tie the exodus to Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s progressive agenda and high living costs, as families with young children leave at twice the rate of others.

Household debt

WalletHub - Q1 Results: Total household debt decreased by $339 billion during Q1 2026. That is 351% more than the decrease in Q1 2025.

 

Household Average: The average household owed a total of $155,607 at the end of Q1 2026, which is $14,804 below the all-time high.

 

Total Debt-to-Assets: The ratio between total household debt and assets, at 8.97%, continues to be at a very healthy level.

Donald Trump

Newsworthy News -  President Trump praised Senator J.D. Vance and Senator Marco Rubio as a “dream team” and “perfect ticket” for 2028.... The claim resonated quickly across social media among Trump supporters, who have long viewed Vance and Rubio as strong, younger standard-bearers for the movement.
 

Heather Cox Richardson --  This morning, [Trump] started in again with a long screed attacking the New York Times for its coverage of his alterations to the reflecting pool in front of the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., and insisting that Democratic presidents Obama and Joe Biden had “botched” renovations that he was now fixing for “a ‘tiny’ fraction of the cost!” He posted an AI image of Obama, Biden, and former House speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) apparently swimming in a filthy version of the reflecting pool with the caption: “Dumacrats Love Sewage.” Then he posted an image of himself on the $100 bill. And then he was back to calling House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-NY) “Low IQ.”

After posting a number of AI images showing the U.S. military destroying the Iranian military, Trump posted: “When the Fake News says that the Iranian enemy is doing well, Militarily, against us, it’s virtual TREASON in that it is such a false, and even preposterous, statement. They are aiding and abetting the enemy!”

Then he posted an image of a map with Venezuela overlaid with the U.S. flag. The caption read: “51st State.”

Trump seems to be comforting himself by lashing out at his perceived enemies and insisting he is competent and popular. Before he left for China today, he claimed: “We have Iran very much under control. We’re either going to make a deal or they’re going to be decimated. One way or the other, we win.”

Polls

Newsweek -  In the YouGov and Ipsos poll, Trump’s economic standing has dropped from net-positive territory early in his second term to deeply negative ratings, representing declines of more than 30 points in each case. In the CNN poll, Trump's rating is at its lowest point, underscoring the breadth and depth of the downturn.

AtlasIntel Poll: Which party do you trust more to handle the following issues? 

Environment: D+27

Education: D+21

Healthcare: D+20

Economic Inequality: D+20

Jobs: D+17

Inflation/Cost of Living: D+16

Democracy: D+16

Trade/Tarrifs: D+13

Foreign Policy. D+11

Immigration: D+9

Taxes: D+9

Defense: D+7

Crime: D+3

Interactive Polls

 AtlasIntel Poll:  Primary votes

AOC: 26% (+10)

Buttigieg: 22% (+7)

Newsom: 21% (-14)

——

Rubio: 45% (+22)

Vance: 30% (-17)

DeSantis: 11% (-2)

Interactive Polls 

Newsweek -  The president has touted winning all of the swing states during the 2024 presidential election, and the projection shared by The Economist shows he is underwater in all those states: Georgia, Pennsylvania, Arizona, Wisconsin, Michigan, North Carolina and Nevada.

The states in which Trump has a positive net approval rating projection are Idaho, North Dakota, Wyoming, West Virginia, Tennessee and Oklahoma. He won all of these states versus former Vice President Kamala Harris during the 2024 presidential election.

Mediaite -  A shocking new poll from AtlasIntel suggests that there may be a new favorite to win the Republican Party’s presidential nomination in 2028.  According to the survey, which was conducted between May 4-7 and included a sample size of 2,069 American adults, a plurality (45.4%) of Republican respondents now identify Secretary of State Marco Rubio as their preferred choice to carry the GOP’s banner two years from now.  Vice President JD Vance, who has long held the pole position in the race, finished in second with 29.6%, followed by Florida Governor Ron DeSantis (R) at 11.2%.

The Hill -   A new CNN poll shows that 77 percent of Americans think President Trump’s policies have raised their costs of living. That includes a majority of Republicans. Trump’s approval rating on the economy sank to 30 percent in the poll, the lowest it has ever been.

Arts

Study Finds - Adults who regularly engaged in arts and cultural activities, visiting museums, attending concerts, dancing, or making art, showed signs of slower biological aging in DNA-based measures.The association was similar in size to what researchers found for physical activity, one of the most studied habits in healthy aging research.

Both how often and how many different types of arts activities people did appeared to matter, with greater variety linked to a slower pace of biological aging. The study is observational and cannot prove cause and effect, but the results held up after accounting for smoking, body weight, income, and other lifestyle factors.

Elon Musk

Unelected Epstein Class Billionaire Elon Musk says he wants to cut Social Security and Medicare, saying that they're "Entitlements." The most entitled man in the world is calling Social Security, and Medicare "Entitlements."

Donald Trump

Occupy Democrats  -  Trump posted 55 times, which included:

10:15 PM - Accuses Obama of attempting a coup in 2016

10:15 PM - Says Obama worked with the CIA to overthrow Trump

10:15 PM - Reposts a tweet saying Obama is a “traitor” and that he should be arrested

10:22 PM - Attacks Dominion Voting Systems for the 2020 election, saying they switched votes

10:22 PM - Says Fulton County, GA had their 2020 fraud exposed (there was none)

10:23 PM - Accuses Obama of personally making $120 million from Obamacare

10:23 PM - Cites quack lawyer Sidney Powell on the 2020 election

10:24 PM - Posts fake JFK Jr account that says Obama wiretapped Trump Tower

10:27 PM - Demands Senator Mark Kelly resign

10:29 PM - Claims neither Biden nor Harris were in charge of the Biden admin

10:29 PM - Attacks Fulton County, GA again

10:29 PM - Posts Fox News clip of Rep Ro Khanna

10:30 PM - Demands Jack Smith be arrested

10:30 PM - Accuses Obama, Clinton, and Comey of treason

10:39 PM - Reposts a tweet from a MAGA account saying they have secret intel proving Clinton and Obama committed crimes

10:39 PM - Reposts a MAGA tweet saying Hillary Clinton should be sent to Haiti

10:40 PM - Says the DOJ is “working hard” to arrest his enemies for treason

10:40 PM - Reposts a tweet attacking his own DOJ and Todd Blanche for no arrests of political enemies

10:40 PM - Posts a TikTok video of people stealing from a convenience store

10:41 PM - Posts a TikTok of someone taking a Door Dash order

10:41 PM - accuses Obama, John Brennan, and Clinton of sedition and treason again

10:42 PM - Posts a video of a man on CCTV footage knocking over food a waiter was carrying

10:47 PM - Calls Obama the “most DEMONIC FORCE” in American politics

10:47 PM - Posts a tweet from Mike Flynn saying 2020 election wasn’t fair

10:49 PM - Attacks Dominion again, claiming they stole the 2020 election (it wasn’t)

10:51 PM - Reposts a fake Charlie Kirk account that claimed Obama blocked Hillary Clinton from being prosecuted

10:53 PM - Claims Obama was part of Hillary Clinton’s emails in some way

11:28 PM - Claims a senior Democrat just testified under oath that Senator Adam Schiff leaked classified information

1:13 AM - Attacks the New York Times for reporting on the reflecting pool

Independent, UK -  President Donald Trump suggested his administration is seriously considering annexing Venezuela, potentially making it the 51st U.S. state, according to Fox News’ America Reports co-anchor John Roberts...Trump has described U.S. operations in Venezuela as “military genius” and claimed the country is now “happy” and “well run” with significant oil production.

Alternet America -   The GOP would like to inform you that two of the most significant votes in recent congressional history did not happen, actually.  House Republicans are moving to expunge Trump’s two impeachments from the congressional record. Rep. Darrell Issa of California has introduced a resolution, H.Res. 1211, that would treat both impeachments as if the articles had never passed the chamber at all.

More than twenty House Republicans have signed on as cosponsors. The resolution has renewed debate among constitutional scholars over whether the House actually possesses the authority to retroactively nullify an impeachment after it has already occurred.

The answer, according to most legal observers, is no. The answer, according to Darrell Issa, is that he would like to be on television.

Alternet -  President Donald Trump attacked The New York Times in a lengthy overnight post on Truth Social after the newspaper reported that the real cost of his Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool renovation was significantly higher than he initially claimed.  The president posted his response shortly after 1 a.m. on Tuesday morning, responding to reporting that the Interior Department plans to pay a contractor $13.1 million for the project, far above the $1.8 million figure Trump publicly announced when unveiling the plan last month.

Federal records reviewed by The Times show the Interior Department increased the contract by $6.2 million beyond the original estimate, bringing the project total to roughly $8 million before additional costs are included. The records also revealed that the administration awarded the no-bid contract to Atlantic Industrial Coatings, a firm that had previously completed work at Trump's Virginia golf club. The renovation includes repairing leaks in the Reflecting Pool, located beneath the Lincoln Memorial, and repainting portions of the structure "American flag blue."

In his Truth Social post, Trump blamed former presidents Barack Obama and Joe Biden for the project's challenges, claiming The Times was "trying to justify Obama and Biden's expensively botched attempt at fixing the long broken, unsightly, and unsanitary" pool.

Black voters lose again

MSN - The Supreme Court on Monday wiped out a decision blocking Alabama Republicans’ congressional map, potentially allowing it to be used for the midterms in the wake of the justices’ recent blockbuster ruling narrowing the Voting Rights Act.  The design would remove one of Alabama’s two majority-Black districts and give Republicans a better shot at winning the seat held by Democratic Rep. Shomari 

Joe Biden's son

Headline USA -    Newly released internal DOJ files appear to implicate President Joe Biden’s disgraced son, Hunter Biden, in alleged prostitution-related activity, corroborating accusations raised years earlier by Senate Republicans.

The files, obtained Monday by the Senate Judiciary Committee and the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, showed Hunter exchanging text messages with several women discussing payments, travel arrangements and extended meetings.

Some of the exchanges appeared to raise potential issues under the Mann Act. This federal law prohibits interstate prostitution and other sex trafficking-related offenses, according to Senate Judiciary Chairman Chuck Grassley, R-Iowa.

Climate

Washington Post - Record heat is expected to sizzle across 22 states this week — with the most intense conditions expected across the Intermountain West, Plains and South. Temperatures are forecast to top 90 degrees for about 50 million people and 100 degrees for 11 million more.

Here are some predicted record-breaking or record-tying temperatures in the region:

• 103 degrees in Las Vegas on Monday.
• 102 degrees in Fresno, California, on Monday and Tuesday.
• 95 degrees in Wichita, Kansas on Friday and Boise, Idaho on Tuesday.
• 94 degrees in Salt Lake City on Tuesday.
• 91 degrees in Kansas City, Missouri, on Friday.

Robert Reich on what he's heard about a plot to oust Trump

Robert Reich -   I had dinner recently with a group of political operatives — sophisticated people who for years have been advising politicians and candidates. During dinner they shared with me their fantasy, which they gave 30 percent odds of becoming a reality within the next four months.

In my dinner companions’ fantasy, Trump’s failed war will elevate gas and food prices so high and long that much of the Republican base will begin turning against Trump. And Trump’s mental problems will become even more obvious.

Faced with all this, JD Vance promises Marco Rubio that he’ll appoint him vice president if Rubio joins Vance in seeking to oust Trump under the 25th Amendment. Rubio agrees.

Vance and Rubio then approach House Speaker Mike Johnson and Senate Majority Leader John Thune for confidential discussions in which they broach the possibility. Johnson and Thune give Vance and Rubio their tacit support.

Vance and Rubio then get Pete Hegseth to sign on, promising Hegseth that he’ll keep his job. They get Todd Blanche to sign on by promising him he’ll be appointed permanent attorney general.

Vance, Rubio, Hegseth, and Blanche are what Thune and Johnson need to make the 25th stick.

This arrangement serves everyone’s interests. For Vance and Rubio, it avoids what could be a messy 2028 primary election in which the two are pitted against each other. As president, Vance gets a head start on being elected president in 2028. As vice president, Rubio is heir apparent in 2032 (when Rubio will be only 60 years old) or in 2036.

As president and vice president, Vance and Rubio end Trump’s tariffs and his war, which have caused prices to soar, upset the Republican base, and turned much of the world against America.

Hegseth gets the job security he’s desperate for. Blanche gets the promotion he covets.

Republicans in the House and Senate get rid of Trump, who’s become an albatross around their necks and who they fear, if he remains in office, will cause them to lose control over the House and Senate in the midterms — and could lead to a congressional rout in 2028.

The plan is finalized when Trump is away at Mar-a-Lago. It’s executed in a conference call to Trump — during which Vance, Rubio, Hegseth, Blanche, Johnson, and Thune notify Trump he’s no longer president.

Trump screams, hollers, pounds his Mar-a-Lago desk, and threatens legal action, but there’s nothing he can do. He’s out of office.

I listened intently as my dinner companions spelled all this out. “So you really think there’s a 30 percent chance of this happening?” I asked them.

“Could be higher if the war continues,” one of them said, and the others agreed. Another of them thought the odds already higher.

“I can’t decide whether to be elated or worried,” I responded.

They laughed, but I was serious.

[ To remind you: Section 4 of the 25th Amendment states that “whenever the Vice President and a majority of … the principal officers of the executive departments … transmit to the president pro-tempore of the Senate and the Speaker of the House of Representatives their written declaration that the President is unable to discharge the powers and duties of his office, the Vice President shall immediately assume the powers and duties of the office as Acting President.” Section 2 of the 25th Amendment states that “whenever there is a vacancy in the office of the Vice President, the President shall nominate a Vice President who shall take office upon confirmation by a majority vote of both Houses of Congress.]

ICE

The Intercept-    Last July, anti-ICE activists joined a protest outside a detention center in Prairieland, Texas, dressed in all black.  Now, seven of these protesters are facing up to 60 years in prison after being convicted of charges including providing “material support for terrorism.”

The Prairieland trial marks the very first convictions under Donald Trump’s executive order designating “antifa” as a “domestic terrorist organization.” Civil liberties experts warn that the case sets a dangerous precedent for the administration's ongoing efforts to suppress left-wing speech.

The Guardian - A group of 40 House Democrats have described “grave concerns” over the Trump administration’s secretive program of deportation flights and demanded that the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) address allegations of mistreatment and inhumane conditions on ICE charter jets.

In a letter shared with the Guardian and addressed to the FAA administrator, Bryan Bedford, the lawmakers describe the “urgent need for transparency” over ICE’s expanded use of commercial airliners to transfer detained immigrants and criticise its “inappropriate and dangerous” efforts to conceal these operations.

The letter follows a Guardian investigation that found the administration was transporting immigrants in irregular ways that often violated their constitutional rights.

.... The number of ICE flights during 2025 has surged by 84% compared with 2024, according to monitoring by human rights groups.

Who owns the straits?

Sam Sifton NY Times - Scholars have argued for centuries that no state can lay claim to the high seas, the ocean common. One jurist from the Dutch Golden Age came up with a term for it: mare liberum, or free sea.

Which is fine out in the middle of an ocean. It gets a little more complicated closer to shore, and particularly with choke points like the Strait of Hormuz. For decades, the United States has argued that it has a right to freedom of navigation in the Strait of Hormuz. Iran, in contrast, has said that it can regulate traffic there.

By what right? Can a nation declare the waters off its coastline as its own? How far out do those waters extend?

I picked up some light reading: “Legal Vortex in the Strait of Hormuz,” a 2014 paper by James Kraska, a professor at the U.S. Naval War College. It could have been written much more recently — like, in February. We spoke yesterday. Kraska has seen this conflict coming for more than a decade.

What’s going on in the strait is fundamentally a legal dispute, he told me. The U.N. Convention on the Law of the Sea, a kind of international constitution for the oceans, governs passage there. Neither Washington nor Tehran has ratified it, but it reflects “customary international law,” which means it is still supposed to be binding, Kraska told me.

In other words, Iran can claim that its territorial waters extend 12 nautical miles from its shoreline, which is permitted by the treaty, but only if it recognizes the right of free navigation through those waters. (Free navigation, Kraska noted. Charging a toll, as Iran hopes to do, would break the law.)

Trump's China trip

For Trump, the Beijing trip is about Iran. For China, it’s about Taiwan

The Congressional Insider - President Trump is heading to Beijing with 16 American CEOs in tow—an unusual show of “economic statecraft” that could either strengthen U.S. leverage or blur the line between national interests and corporate priorities.

....Elon Musk and Apple CEO Tim Cook are among the most prominent attendees, highlighting how central tech and supply chains are to the agenda.  The administration is signaling plans for formal “board of investment” and “board of trade” structures to systematize U.S.-China economic engagement.

Reported agenda topics include the Iran conflict, trade disputes, and Taiwan—issues that carry national-security consequences beyond any single business deal.

Best states for animals

SmileHub  - With up to 40% of America’s native animal species at risk of extinction and over 150 million pets in households across the country relying on our support to survive, the non-profit organization SmileHub today released new reports on the Best Charities for Animals and the Best States for Animals in 2026.

In order to determine where America’s wildlife and animal companions live their best lives, SmileHub compared the animal-friendliness of all 50 states across 18 key metrics. The data set ranges from the number of animal charities per capita to the number of state conservation programs and initiatives to the share of no-kill animal shelters.

Best States	Worst States
1. Oregon	41. Alaska
2. Colorado	42. South Carolina
3. Nebraska	43. Nevada
4. Washington	44. New York
5. Vermont	45. Mississippi
6. Montana	46. New Mexico
7. Kansas	47. Georgia
8. Minnesota	48. Hawaii
9. Missouri	49. Maryland
10. Michigan	50. Alabama

Key Stats

• California has the most animal charities per capita – 8.7 times more than Delaware, which has the fewest charities.
   
• New Hampshire has the most veterinarians per 1,000 pet-owning households – 3.2 times higher than Mississippi, which has the fewest veterinarians.
   
• Delaware and New Hampshire have the highest share of no-kill animal shelters – 3.4 times higher than Maryland, which has the lowest share.

To view the full report and your state’s rank

Robert F Kennedy Jr

NY Times -  Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has said little publicly about vaccines in recent months, at the behest of a White House worried that his unpopular stance will hurt Republicans in November’s midterm elections. But he has not abandoned his quest for evidence that they are unsafe.

Working behind the scenes, Mr. Kennedy is spearheading an intense push, across health agencies under his purview, for government scientists and federal data contractors to examine his long-held theory that vaccines are helping to fuel an epidemic of chronic disease, according to multiple people familiar with the effort.

They said the wide-ranging inquiry is a top priority for Mr. Kennedy, who sees vaccines as a “potential culprit” in various neurological and autoimmune disorders, including asthma and allergies. It resurrects research into a number of ideas Mr. Kennedy has espoused, including whether vaccines are linked to autism and whether thimerosal, a preservative that has largely been removed from vaccines in the United States but remains in some flu shots, is dangerous.

Cuba

The Hill -  Senate Republicans are cautioning President Trump against ordering military strikes against the socialist regime in Cuba, arguing the U.S. military already has its hands full with Iran. The Trump administration, these Republicans say, should not be thinking about opening another front for the military in a midterm election year where voters are already showing their displeasure with the war in Iran.  They say finding a conclusion to the Iran war should be the nation’s, and the administration’s, priority.

Suspending the gas tax

MS NOW -  At present, the federal gas tax adds on 18.4 cents per gallon of regular gasoline, 19.3 cents per gallon for planes and jet fuel and 24.4 cents per gallon on diesel fuel. The money collected goes directly to the Highway Trust Fund, a pool of funding used to pay for federal highway construction and maintenance. But however much Trump would like to temporarily wipe out this tax, only an act of Congress can alter the federal gas tax rate, even to temporarily pause its collection.

Notably, Trump isn’t the first person to think that pausing the tax is a potential political win — and it’s a policy proposal that has crossed political lines. Former Sens. Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., and John McCain, R-Ariz., proposed a “gas tax holiday” during their presidential nomination bids back in 2008. Former President Joe Biden also called on Congress to pass a suspension back in 2022, as soaring inflation threatened Democrats ahead of the midterms.

The last time a gas tax suspension was under consideration, it was Republicans who were against the pause, mostly to deny any political cover for Biden. This time around, Trump’s backing might shift the dynamic. Senate Democrats already introduced a bill in March to suspend the gas tax until Oct. 1. After Trump’s comments, Rep. Anna Paulina Luna, R-Fla., jumped on board Monday to say that she would be introducing her own proposal as well.

But just because an idea is bipartisan doesn’t make it a good one.

Play

‘Irrational’: House Democrat sounds off on Trump amid soaring gas prices

MAY 10, 2026 / 11:24

Consider that the original proposal from Clinton and McCain was panned, in part because, as Reuters reported at the time, “since refineries cannot increase their supply of gasoline in the space of a few summer months, lower prices will just boost demand and the benefits will flow to oil companies, not consumers.” If put into place today, one economist suggested that a gas tax holiday would only save drivers roughly 60 cents total per trip to the pump, a drop in the tank compared to the $1.50 per gallon leap we’ve seen since Trump launched the Iran war more than two months ago.

If anything, the federal gas tax is already too low. As the Bipartisan Policy Center recently noted, funding for the HTF is already lagging. The fixed amount was last raised since 1993 and hasn’t changed with rising inflation or increased fuel efficiency from cars requiring less gas to fill up a tank. Last year, the fund ran a deficit of nearly $13 billion, according to the Congressional Research Service, with the fund likely to run out entirely by 2028.

Voting

Via Annie

Polls

Washington Post -  Republicans are eight seats closer to keeping control of the House since President Donald Trump pushed state lawmakers to redraw congressional maps, steepening the Democrats’ climb toward reclaiming any hold on federal power in November.

Democrats are still exploring whether any long-shot legal moves could save their redistricting attempt in Virginia after the state’s high court on Friday overturned last month’s referendum to approve it. Democrats and their allies are still challenging new maps in Florida and Missouri. House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-New York) insisted Friday his party will still win the chamber.

But Democrats were confronting the reality that Trump succeeded in tilting the playing field to the GOP’s advantage. Eric Holder, a former attorney general leading the Democrats’ redistricting drive, said Republicans were trying “to steal the 2026 midterm election.”

Just two weeks ago, Democrats had fought to a draw, with Virginia’s referendum adding four new left-leaning seats and some Republicans questioning whether the arms race was worth it. Then last week, Florida Republicans adopted a redrawn map hoping to turn four more districts red, and the Supreme Court opened the door for Republicans to do the same in several other Southern states.

“The critics of the White House spiked the football a little too early,” said Alex Pfeiffer, a Republican operative and former senior official in the Trump White House. “The map is more favorable to us now.”

Newsguard -   Nearly one third of Americans (30 percent) believe that at least one of the three attempts on President Donald Trump’s life over the last two years was staged, according to a new NewsGuard/YouGov poll. For each attempted assassination, a majority of Americans said either that it was staged or that they were not sure — averaging 54 percent across all three. Only 38 percent of Americans believe that all three assassination attempts were authentic.

Climate

Newsweek -  Emergency services are coordinating as over 300 earthquakes have rattled Southern California in a fast-moving swarm over the last 24 hours. The seismic activity has ranged from micro-quakes up to a magnitude of 4.7, according to data from the United States Geological Survey (USGS). The rapid clustering has put emergency crews on alert as scientists assess whether the shaking represents routine background activity or the early stages of a larger event. No injuries or damage have been reported, and no tsunami warnings have been issued.

The epicenter of the swarm, Brawley, is a small Imperial Valley city of roughly 26,000 people, located about 15 miles north of the U.S.–Mexico border and 30 miles from the Salton Sea. It sits in one of the most seismically active zones in the state, near the Brawley Seismic Zone and the southern end of the San Andreas Fault—a region known for frequent earthquake swarms.

The USGS’s real-time monitoring system detected the small quakes across a concentrated area of Southern California over the past two days.

Most were minor, but the rapid clustering prompted the California Governor’s Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) and local agencies to activate enhanced monitoring protocols. 

Eva Xiao, Financial Times -  Over the past month, firefighters in Georgia and Florida have battled hundreds of fires that have spread across both states, which are not typically considered hotspots.  The severe and protracted drought, which scientists say will probably worsen as global temperatures rise, is driving the exceptionally high fire activity this year.

So far, about 1.9mn acres (700,000 hectares) nationwide have been razed by early May, according to the latest data from the National Interagency Fire Center. That is nearly 80 per cent more than the 10-year average and the most acres burned year to date since 2017, involving more than 25,000 fires. More US wildfire activity is occurring in places far from what is normally thought of as fire country, such as Maine and Massachusetts in the north-east, as global warming intensifies.

“We’re going to have to be able to tackle multiple threats at once,” said Kim Cobb, professor at Brown University, listing coastal flooding, hurricanes and other climate disasters that locales will face. “We don’t have the luxury of waiting . . . because it’s going to be happening all at once

NY Times -   In much of the Southwest, the ponderosa pine is the one and only truly big tree, thriving in dry heat and poor soils...

But after about 26 years of exceptionally high heat and drought, hundreds of million of these trees in lands stretching from New Mexico and Colorado to the southern Sierra Nevada of California have died. And in many places, something even more startling is happening: The trees aren’t coming back.

Ecologists warn that in just 25 years, more than 70 percent of the Southwestern needle leaf evergreen forests, which include ponderosa pines, may be replaced by grass in what might qualify as the first significant post-climate change landscape in America.

One of the biggest consequences is the loss of shade. Without the forest canopy overhead, snow can evaporate quickly instead of trickling into rivers, streams and aquifers. In the mountainous parts of the West, where roughly 70 percent of freshwater runoff originates as snowpack, that’s a huge deal, a sign of a catastrophic feedback loop beginning to form.

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Lands that are no longer covered by snow also absorb more heat from the sun, drying them out and leaving them more vulnerable to large wildfires. Those fires in turn put more carbon into the atmosphere, warming the climate even more. In 50 or so years, by some estimates, snow could virtually disappear from the West, making life there exceedingly difficult.

Science

Democratic Conservation Alliance - Every single member of the National Science Board — the group of independent experts who advise the president and Congress on policy across the scientific spectrum — was just unceremoniously fired by Donald Trump with no warning.

Artificial Intelligence

Congressional Insider -   Pennsylvania became the first state to sue an AI company for operating unlicensed chatbots that impersonated doctors and therapists, exposing vulnerable users to potentially deadly medical advice from fake professionals.

Pennsylvania filed lawsuit against Character.AI after investigators discovered chatbots falsely claiming to be licensed psychiatrists

AI bot “Emilie” offered depression diagnoses, medication suggestions, and confidentiality promises using an invalid Pennsylvania license number

Character.AI already faced multiple lawsuits linking its chatbots to teen suicides and self-harm incidents throughout 2025

Governor Shapiro’s administration seeks immediate injunction to halt what it calls illegal practice of medicine

Middle East

NBC News -   President Donald Trump rejected Iran’s response to a U.S. proposal to bring an end to the war in the Middle East, calling the message “totally unacceptable” in a post on Truth Social. Trump did not offer details about Iran’s response, which Iranian state media reported was sent through Pakistani mediators. The message comes as talks between Tehran and Washington have stalled in recent weeks.