Governments produce an abundance of information and put that information in the public domain, but often the public can’t easily find or access it. The Internet Archive’s Democracy’s Library project is helping by preserving critical information and publications produced by governments: federal, state, provincial, and municipal– and making them available to anyone wanting to build new services on them.
Since the program’s launch in 2022, the Internet Archive has built on this already strong foundation by becoming a designated Federal Depository Library—joining 1,100+ peer libraries—and by utilizing Democracy’s Library as a means to connect to libraries, archives, and patrons with purpose.
Although it would be convenient to tie the practice of preserving government information to the messy birth of the United States, grounded as it was in principles around liberty and democratic process, we lack pithy quotes from the founders on this exact topic. What we do see is recognition in the very first Congress that citizens needed access to documentation of the business of their government.
In 1789, the House of Representatives provided for the printing and distribution of the laws and proceedings of the new Congress. From this modest beginning, the US Government rapidly rose to become the largest publisher in the world. Over the following century, a series of legislative milestones followed: the establishment of the Government Printing Office in 1860, and the Government Printing Act of 1895, which centralized GPO’s authority as the primary channel for distributing the federal record.
Taken together, these efforts reflect a consistent, if imperfectly realized, principle: that government information belongs to the people and that information should be freely distributed to its citizens for their own use. It is important to note that libraries were identified as the natural and primary means of getting that information into the hands of citizens.
Who are the audiences for government information?
First and foremost, government itself; it is essential that law and policy makers understand prior law and policy. With an abundance of outputs, governments are not always the best record keepers and frequently turn to libraries to find appropriate documentation.
Second, we see serious researchers (including journalists) as those that rely on access to government information. These users seek authoritative sources and want assurances around provenance and reliable sources; libraries provide that authority.
Third, we see curious and motivated citizens. Users in this category include genealogists but can also include people like property owners seeking to understand current or prior ordinances in their jurisdiction, or people seeking to understand the history of their house or neighborhood.
Finally, an emerging category of user is machines; research methods mediated and assisted by computers have been on the rise for some time, but with the advent of LLMs and generative AI tools, a human assisted by a machine is emerging as a distinctive category of user. Looking across these categories, we can assert that government information not only belongs to everyone, but it is for everyone.
Why is Democracy’s Library important today?
Democracy’s Library is more than just collections – it is also a movement to bring people together in common cause, to take action, and to build momentum around increasing access. The Information Stewardship Forum, hosted by the Internet Archive in March, was one such gathering and we look forward to more in the future.
One of the themes that emerged from the Information Stewardship Forum is that, especially in an increasingly complex and dynamic environment, public access to government information cannot be left to chance. As the United States marks 250 years, Democracy’s Library exists to make sure it isn’t. Please join us.
Let us know how we can help you by collaborating to digitize and preserve collections, to build services on existing collections, and to support each other in areas of mutual interest. I welcome your emails at any time. I will be attending GODORT meetings at the June 2026 American Library Association meeting in Chicago, and you can find me there, as well as at the CNI meeting in December in Washington DC, or at our headquarters in San Francisco anytime you are in town. Posted in Announcements | Tagged democracys library | Leave a reply
Students in a sixth-grade class read at Stege Elementary School in Richmond, on Feb. 6, 2023.
This story was originally published by CalMatters. Sign up for their newsletters.
California librarians were stunned when a last-minute budget change stripped K-12 schools of a trove of research materials, potentially leaving thousands of students without resources to do reports, projects or homework assignments.
Without notice to schools or librarians, the Legislature last week canceled $5.5 million that pays online fees for the Encyclopedia Britannica, New York Times, PBS videos such as Ken Burns documentaries, scientific journals and thousands of other online materials used by students and teachers. The cut goes into effect on July 1, 2027.
“We had no idea this was coming,” said Greg Lucas, head of the California State Library, which helps oversee the program for California’s 10,000 public schools. “This will have a huge impact on California students.”
The program, called Compass, is an online database of research and curriculum materials that have been vetted by teachers and librarians. Compass is also available through public libraries, but the vast majority of users are at K-12 schools. Since the program launched in 2018, it’s received nearly 1 billion hits.
Students use Compass for classroom assignments as well as for recreation. Many of the materials are available in multiple languages. Among the more popular features are National Geographic Kids; Pebble Go Science, which includes hundreds of science activities for pre-kindergarten through second grade; and Alexander Street, which offers videos of cultural performances such as the Joffrey Ballet and the Royal Shakespeare Company.
Compass is especially important at a time when fewer schools have libraries — and librarians — to help students with research. Although nearly 90% of schools have physical space on campus for books, magazines and other research materials, only about a quarter of those spaces are staffed by librarians. The rest are staffed by volunteers, classified employees or not at all. California ranks 49th nationwide in school librarian staffing, with nearly 10,000 students for each librarian, according to research by the Institute of Museum and Library Services.
Compass is available free to all schools in California. If schools were to subscribe individually to Compass materials, they’d spend more than $216 million annually, according to a State Library report. A typical medium-sized school district might pay $100,000 or more for the services, an expense lower-income districts are less likely to have money for.
Losing the service raises concerns about internet access
Without access to Compass materials, students would likely rely on free resources online. But those materials tend to contain advertisements or track user data, a violation of state student privacy laws. They also are less likely to be vetted for accuracy, a particular danger in the age of artificial intelligence.
“Losing Compass is catastrophic for the state of California,” said Kate MacMillan, library services coordinator for Napa Valley Unified. “This service is a lifeline. I can’t believe the Legislature would let this happen.”
David Smith in Philadelphia, Mon 29 Jun 2026 07.00 EDT
This is the room where it happened. The assembly room at Independence Hall in Philadelphia where, 250 years ago this week, a group of sweating, treasonous men broke from the most powerful empire since ancient Rome. Amid a summer of trial and error, delegates including John Adams, Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson ratified a flawed but aspirational document to declare their independence from the British crown. The date was 4 July 1776 – but it took nearly a month for all 56 delegates of the Second Continental Congress to formally sign on.
“I don’t blame them,” Maggie Burkett, a park ranger, told a group of about 40 tourists as they gazed at green baize tables adorned with books, letters, pipes and candles one recent afternoon. “These words on this page are treason, just as much as burning the king’s coats of arms was. By signing this document, you are literally risking your life. The 56 men who signed this document were brave. In my opinion, they were heroes.”
The anniversary of this date and this document should be cause for a unifying nationwide celebration. Yet two and a half centuries after a bloody revolution that humiliated King George III and installed George Washington as the first US president, the semiquincentennial has become just the latest cue for division, rancour and existential angst.
“There’s a sense of dread,” said Eddie Glaude, the author of America, U.S.A.: How Race Shadows the Nation’s Anniversaries. “It’s as if it’s going to descend below kitsch. It’s going to be a collage of terrible myth-making.”
Two hours south of Philadelphia, in Washington DC, the official centre of the nation’s birthday party is, critics say, looking less like a dignified civic jubilee than a gaudy reality TV pageant.
Trump, who has been hyping this anniversary for years and has expressed glee that it falls in his second term, launched a project to beautify the capital, with statues scrubbed clean of graffiti and water flowing from long-neglected fountains. He even intends to build a triumphal arch that will dwarf the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.
But in a metaphor that is almost too neat, the president has come unstuck with a $14.7m renovation of the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool on the National Mall. No-bid contracts for the work were awarded to vendors with past ties to the president. Within days of its completion, an algae bloom turned the pool water bright green while its “American flag blue” coating began to peel off. Trump has blamed the embarrassing debacle on mysterious vandals and threatened the alleged vandals with jail time.
This tone was set earlier this month when, on 14 June, coinciding with his 80th birthday, Trump commandeered the White House South Lawn to host brutal Ultimate Fighting Championship cage matches. He followed up last week on the National Mall with a formal kick-off for the Great American State Fair, in effect a Trump rally with military jets roaring overhead that was hastily arranged when previously announced performing artists withdrew over the event’s partisan nature.
Diego Lopes of Brazil celebrates a win against Steve Garcia during the UFC Freedom 250 event on the White House South Lawn in Washington DC on 14 June. Photograph: Rey Del Rio/ Zuffa LLC
Addressing the crowd, the transportation secretary, Sean Duffy, railed against “those libtards that cancelled on us” while praising Trump as “the greatest president that’s ever existed in this country since George Washington”. The affair featured no Democrats and culminated with Trump’s familiar battle cry of “Make America great again” and signature dance to the Village People’s YMCA performed by the US Marine Band.
The state fair is running for 16 days, and all 56 states and territories are represented, including some that opted not to send a delegation because of Trump’s hands-on approach. The half-baked tribute to Americana – described by the Washingtonian as “sparsely attended and shockingly boring” – features a ferris wheel that was reportedly plagued by power cuts on opening day.
The mall will host a “Salute to America” celebration on 4 July itself, again starring Trump and an attempt to break the Guinness world record for the biggest firework display ever seen. In August IndyCar descends on the capital for the inaugural Freedom 250 Grand Prix of Washington DC.
We should be able to have the nation’s birthday without it somehow being an endorsement of this crazy man who happens to be in the White House
Jill Lepore
All of this has come about after America250, the official bipartisan commission established by Congress more than a decade ago, was elbowed aside in favor of Freedom 250, a Trump-aligned initiative. America 250’s modest ambitions include a time capsule with contributions from all 50 states, an essay contest for students and an America’s Block Party concert on 4 July featuring Queen Latifah, Chris Stapleton and the Smashing Pumpkins.
The upshot is that America’s milestone birthday feels particularly joyless, less a celebration of the world’s most powerful country than a case study in how a demoralised, self-doubting nation has fallen prey to culture wars and the narcissism of its leader. Trump – a uniquely divisive president laying siege to freedoms, institutions and truth itself – has proved to be the ultimate party pooper.
Speaking from a hotel across the street from Independence Hall, David Blight, a professor of American history at Yale University, said: “I don’t feel celebratory at all. I don’t know how to explain [Trump’s] vanity projects any better than anybody else. This is who he is. He’s not unlike Mussolini, who wanted to leave his mark all over Rome. It’s like theatre of the absurd.”
More graduate degree programs will be eligible for higher loan caps, according to a list published Monday by the Education Department. Read original article: Read More
How fear of a market meltdown may have quietly shaped the Supreme Court’s ruling to protect Fed independence 02:44 • Source: CNN
Published 5:31 PM EDT, Mon June 29, 2026
Analysis by Zachary B. Wolf with Kate Carroll and Dejania Oliver, CNN
Trump gets more power from the Supreme Court, but hits some limits elsewhere
On the one hand, President Donald Trump is consolidating power with help from the Supreme Court.
The conservative supermajority, in a 6-3 decision, overturned decades of precedent to give him new power to fire, at will, even people at agencies — in this case the Federal Trade Commission — that Congress had intentionally tried to shield from politics.
On the other hand, Trump keeps running into the limits of his power.
In a 5-4 decision, the high court seemed to carve out an exception for the Federal Reserve, blocking, at least for the moment, Trump’s effort to fire Lisa Cook, a Fed governor he doesn’t like. Trump said Tuesday he will move forward in trying to fire Cook.
She might ultimately get the boot, but the Supreme Court decision makes clear there are a few things even conservative Supreme Court justices think should be walled off from Trump’s otherwise vast power to do as he pleases.
“I would not risk destabilizing the United States economy just so that we can further mull over an issue that, in various permutations we’ve been thinking about for many years,” Justice Brett Kavanaugh said in a concurring opinion.
Trump also must now pay $5 million to woman juries said he defamed. In a more personal setback for Trump, justices declined to take up an appeal from President Donald Trump over a $5 million judgment and verdict that he sexually abused and defamed E. Jean Carroll, a decision that means the president will now have to pay the magazine columnist.
Limits on president’s power still include tariffs. CNN’s Elisabeth Buchwald notes that when Trump threatened last week to put a 100% tariff on every import from Europe — something that might have turned markets early in his term — it barely got any notice. That’s because back in February the court ruled Trump could not use emergency authority to impose tariffs at will.
And on elections, Trump is also facing setbacks. He desperately wants to change the rules for the coming election. But the court refused to agree that mail-in ballots received after Election Day cannot be counted.
More importantly, despite months of strong-arm tactics, his calls to pass an election security law continue to fail.
Part of the reason Republicans in the Senate can’t ram through the elections bill, which Trump calls the SAVE America Act, is that the Senate parliamentarian — a woman Trump has no power to fire — won’t agree to add the election legislation into a bill that is supposed to be about budget reconciliation.
On issues large and small, Trump is running into the courts. When he took a tour of things he’d like to change in and around DC over the weekend, he was met with evidence — at least for now — of the limits of his power.
The Kennedy Center saga, for instance, shows both what happens when a president packs commissions with supporters — they can sideline laws to put his name on things — but also the limits of that strategy: a judge ordered the name removed. Similarly, Trump wants to turn a beloved-by-locals inexpensive public golf course in DC into a championship-level links. But a lawsuit has paused his plans, for now. He toured the existing course Sunday and viewed blueprints.
Both things can be true. The Supreme Court did give Trump new power Monday. At the same time, he’s running out of time to use it. And despite his efforts to stack commissions and put supporters across the government, institutional guardrails still exist.
Here’s how Trump described his new power in a post on Truth Social:
Today’s Historic Slaughter Decision by the Supreme Court is the Greatest Increase in Presidential Power in the last 100 years. Such a Monumental Ruling at such an important time! President DONALD J. TRUMP
Justice Sonya Sotomayor — for the second time in two weeks reading an ominous dissent from the bench — predicted chaos as a result of the new prcedent.
CNN’s Chief Legal Affairs Correspondent Paula Reid added the important nuance to Trump’s boast:
Reid: This is a big day. It’s clear President Trump has lost a few battles here this term at the Supreme Court, but he is winning the war to expand executive power. These opinions about who Trump can and cannot fire, these will be some of the defining opinions of the Roberts Court. Because here, the question hanging over the entire early second Trump term has been: Exactly who can he fire? Are there any limits on his power? And here today, we get an answer…
A Democratic senator raised concerns during a congressional hearing about election preparedness ahead of the 2026 midterm elections, questioning whether authorities are equipped to respond to potential security threats. The senator also criticized U.S. President Donald Trump and discussed the role of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) in a broader debate over public safety, government preparedness, and election security. The exchange became one of the hearing’s most closely watched moments as lawmakers debated oversight and federal responsibilities.
‘What a loser’: Biden blasts Trump’s Reflecting Pool, arch construction
The comments came on the two-year anniversary of Biden’s disastrous presidential debate performance.
USA TODAY, Updated June 28, 2026, 12:59 p.m. ET
WASHINGTON – Former President Joe Biden called his Oval Office successor a “loser” during a gala in Maryland over the weekend, accusing him of obsessing over “vanity projects” at the White House and Kennedy Center.
Biden ticked off a list of initiatives, including President Donald Trump‘s construction of what Biden alleged is an “arch in his own honor” and of “hiring his own pool guy to fix the Reflecting Pool.”
“Whoa, what a loser,” the 46th president said.
USA TODAY has reached out to the White House for comment.
The 47th president has long had a penchant for renovations and construction. He’s consistently argued he’s working to beautify the nation’s capital, from the planned East Wing ballroom to the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool.
Yet critics have questioned the the necessity and rollouts of those projects, especially as the White House has repeatedly said it’s focused on cutting government waste, fraud and abuse during Trump’s second term.
In April, for example, Trump called the Reflecting Pool a “filthy, dirty” place and said that it was “leaking like a sieve.” An analysis of federal contract data by USA TODAY found that 20 days before Trump first announced the renovation, the government had already committed $8.5 million to fix the pool even though the president said it would cost $2 million.
The pool has since been heavily scrutinized as workers have raced to clean up algae blooms that turned it green (after it was painted blue). See photos at embedded link below…
“The Reflecting Pool reflects something even worse: the narcissism and incompetence at the core of this administration,” Biden said on June 27.
The Trump administration has run into issues in the courts and in Congress over the Kennedy Center and a new White House ballroom. A federal judge last week ordered the Kennedy Center to explain a tarp and scaffolding covering its front entrance after Trump’s name was taken down.
Observers are noting that the reflecting pool fiasco, in which Trump created the idea there was an emergency, ignored experts, bypassed normal procedures to give a wildly inflated contract to a crony, bragged about his success, ignored the problems, claimed his enemies had sabotaged him, and finally stationed troops around the landmark he had turned into a swamp, represents the Trump administration perfectly.
Letters from an American logo WP AI
But a report by Michael Scherer of The Atlantic about Trump’s remodeling of the West Colonnade is perhaps an even better representation of the Trump presidency. In March, Trump tore up the light brown Tennessee flagstone that paved the walkway in the West Colonnade that connects the White House residence to the Oval Office and replaced it with polished black African granite carved in Italy. When a reporter asked Trump who was paying for the remodeling, Trump answered: “Paid for by me.”
But, as Scherer discovered, that was a lie. He examined National Park Service budget documents showing that the walkway replacement cost taxpayers $689,232, all part of a $1.3 million project that includes new hardware for nearby doors. Last year, Scherer reports, the National Park Service spent $347,503 to replace the stucco on the colonnade wall so Trump could hang pictures of the U.S. presidents alongside plaques featuring his own opinions of them. Documents say the project was a “Rush project at request of POTUS.”
Scherer explains that Trump has redirected taxpayer money from national parks around the country to his own projects, leaving the parks unable to make needed repairs or hire staff. Expected funding for more than 900 Park Service projects never arrived—including $424,000 to replace a guardrail on the edge of a cliff in Colorado’s Gunnison National Park that National Park Service employees identified as “a significant safety hazard for visitors.” For some parks, nearly 70% of approved funds have been pulled back.
Trump has also pulled National Park Service staff to Washington, D.C., for his Freedom 250 events, a crisis because the Park Service has lost almost a quarter of its staff since he took office. In his 2027 budget, Trump calls for cutting staff by another 3,967 full-time employees, or 31%.
That budget also asked for another $10 billion to beautify Washington, a sum that Scherer notes is nearly eight times as large as all the money spent on National Park Service projects in 2025. The Senate Appropriations Committee stripped that request out of its marked-up version of the president’s budget.
The administration appears eager to keep what’s happening in the national parks out of sight. Early this year, the Department of the Interior instructed its employees that they could not share information about serious injuries or deaths on public lands, instead redirecting all such information through the Department of the Interior’s Office of Communications.
As outdoors writer Wes Siler reports in his Wes Siler’s Newsletter, the Interior Department “manages the National Park Service, Bureau of Land Management, U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, Bureau of Reclamation, and Bureau of Indian Affairs. Those agencies are responsible for about 20 percent of all land area in the United States, hundreds of millions of annual visitors, and spend annually $88.6 billion taxpayer dollars.”
As Jake Spring reported in the Washington Post, more than 300 million people visit America’s national parks each year, and about 350 of them die (not always from accidents). In the past, park service employees could identify deaths or injuries from unsafe conditions, warning others from the area. Now the communications team from the Interior Department controls that information and does not always release it.
It did not release the information that a 72-year-old man died of extreme heat on a popular trail in the Grand Canyon on June 12 of this year. NPS employees wanted to warn other visitors, but the Interior Department did not release the information. Four days later a couple aged 67 and 68 also died of extreme heat on the same trail.
Urban Evolution: How Life Is Adapting to Concrete Jungles, 06.26.2026
Words by willow defebaugh Welcome to The Overview newsletter, a weekly meditation on nature from Editor-in-Chief Willow Defebaugh. Nothing exists outside of nature.
I remind myself of this nearly every day that I spend roaming the streets of Brooklyn, where I have nested for over 14 years. When it comes to our binary between urban and rural environments, evolution is indiscriminate: Concrete is geology, traffic is migration, and blinking lights become the celestial sphere.
Lament it or not, cities are the fastest-growing ecosystem on Earth. And life is doing what it does best: endeavoring to adapt.Urban evolution is a burgeoning area of study for biologists. Higher temperatures, splintered landscapes, artificial light, noise, and pollution are driving changes in animal and plant species. Some of this manifests behaviorally: reduced fear of humans, more willingness to explore, faster learning.
Genetically, this can look like altered immune systems, toxin resistance, pigmentation changes, heat tolerance, and metabolic shifts. Evolution is not only past, but present.With the onset of coal pollution in big cities, the English peppered moth’s coloration darkened in order to avoid predators and blend into soot-stained surfaces. White clover, which produces cyanide to ward off herbivores, is evolving to produce less in urban areas where there are fewer grazers—which has the added benefit of preventing the plant from freezing where snow cover is less prevalent.
Anole lizards are evolving longer limbs and stickier feet adapted to artificial surfaces, while killifish have adapted to tolerate polluted waters. Improbably,life persists.Twenty percent of the world’s bird species now dwell in cities. To not have their voices drowned out by traffic, many urban birds are changing their tunes, singing at higher frequencies, earlier in the morning before rush hour. Pigeons partly thrive in cities because buildings mirror the cliffs their ancestors, the rock dove, nested on. What birds have yet to adapt to is glass.
Each year in the United States alone, 1 billion birds die flying into the transparent boundaries we construct between ourselves and the sky. (Groups like the New York City Bird Alliance are working to change that.)The tension of being a person who loves nature and lives in a big city blooms vigorously in my chest. Urban life has its sustainable advantages: lower carbon footprints, more land spared, public transportation, and resource efficiency.
On the other hand, cities reduce native biodiversity by about 75% (not everyone can adapt), rely on consuming distant ecosystems, and risk further disconnecting humans from the rest of nature by invisibilizing it. So, what’s the right path?I find fertile soil in the blended bothness. Wherever we choose to live our lives, we change, and are inevitably changed by. This is as true for humans as it is for the more-than-human world.
Perhaps the question isn’t urban versus rural living, but to approach both ecologically and ask: How am I changing the story of this place? What are the relationships that allow it to thrive, and how are my actions impacting them? How can we be better neighbors? How might we biomimetically mirror the natural habitat of this land so that others can thrive?Earlier this week, I was walking down my tree-lined street and saw a firefly winking in the dusk of a long midsummer day. I wondered at this miraculous blink of evolution until I realized that it was hovering around a string of lights. Maybe it was seeing a constellation of fallen stars. Or maybe it was seeing a crowd of unmoving kin, flashing its luminescence at them as if to say: Look around you. Life still pulses here. The rhythm is within and without. It’s time to wake up.
Editor’s Note: AI image used as featured image provided by WP AI.
Unlike scrolling, deep reading fiction requires your brain to concentrate on a single narrative for an extended period, which can strengthen attention and cognitive resilience.
Fiction may help readers better understand other people’s perspectives and navigate life’s challenges in a low-stakes environment.
If you don’t like reading right now, start small with compelling stories, audiobooks, or just 10 minutes of reading a day to gradually rebuild your attention span.
We are in the Information Age, where we are flooded with a constant stream of content vying for our attention. And perhaps more than ever before, we are feeling distracted, fatigued, and emotionally drained. While mindless scrolling seems to alleviate stress in the moment, it’s not nearly as effective for our mental health as sitting down with a good book.
In fact, deep reading fiction helps us see other perspectives more clearly, among other benefits. To better understand how novels compare to social media, we asked psychiatrists what happens to our brains when we read fiction, why the habit is more valuable than ever, and how to get started if you normally avoid reading anything longer than a text.
Lauren Grawert, MD, double board-certified psychiatrist and clinical advisor at The Garden Recovery & Wellness
Allen Masry, MD, board-certified adult and addiction psychiatrist and medical director at All in Solutions Behavioral Health
Deep reading is simply concentrating on long-form content (any book!) for extended periods. When you deep read fiction specifically, your attention is focused only on the narrative rather than bouncing between competing sources of information.
“Your brain has ample opportunity to create meaning, visualize scenes, make predictions, and develop an emotional connection with the characters,” says Lauren Grawert, MD, board-certified psychiatrist and clinical advisor at The Garden Recovery & Wellness. “This type of concentration is significantly different from rapidly scanning through short bits of information online or via social media, as deep reading requires sustained cognitive focus.”
MEDORA, N.D. (KFYR) – The Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library opens next week. It will be open to the public on July 4.
Crews are still putting the finishing touches on the $450 million 96,000 square foot building.
Before the doors open to the public, we got a look inside.
Samantha Daniels is one of the first people to see the inside of the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library.
“It’s big, and there’s a lot of wood everywhere,” she said.
She and her family got a VIP tour before opening day.
“The architecture is astonishing because they made the roof so high, and they made the roof have windows. That’s pretty cool,” said Samantha’s brother, Evan.
“I think it’s pretty cool. It will be nice for Medora, and it’s interesting,” added her dad, Grant.
The library walks visitors like the Daniels family through the 26th president’s life, starting with his childhood in New York and his time in North Dakota.
Many of the exhibits are interactive and use artificial intelligence. Designers hope the experience keeps visitors exploring instead of reaching for their phones.
“We think that by creating these interactive experiences that feel like magic,” said Matt Briney, chief communications and marketing officer for the Theodore Roosevelt Presidential Library. “They’re going to encourage people to explore. They’re going to encourage people to learn.”
The building itself holds a certain “wow factor,” starting in the lobby. The walls are made from dirt brought in from around the region.
“It’s probably the most stunning aspect of the building itself,” said Briney.
Crews hand-stamped every inch of these 26-foot-high walls.
“The whole process took about three months, and we didn’t know what it would look like until we removed those forms,” Briney explained.
Natural light pours through skylights across the building. Large windows frame the Badlands. Those views haven’t changed much since Theodore Roosevelt first visited in the 1800s.
Architects built the library into that same landscape. Its gently sloping roof becomes part of the landscape. It is covered in native grasses and plants. Visitors can walk the rooftop terrain and take in sweeping views of the Badlands.
“Right down in the valley below is where Theodore Roosevelt got off the train for the very first time,” said Briney.
The library is expected to draw up to 200,000 visitors a year.
Johns Hopkins University cuts 110 workers after losing some federal funding
By JT Moodee Lockman, June 25, 2026 / 8:52 PM EDT / CBS Baltimore
Johns Hopkins University laid off 110 workers as the Baltimore institution continues to deal with federal funding losses, officials said Thursday.
The layoffs come nearly a year after the university eliminated more than 2,200 workers. In June 2025, the university also announced a hiring freeze and paused annual pay increases, citing uncertainty in funding sources.
On Thursday, university officials said the latest round of layoffs was a last resort, which mostly impacted administrative workers.
“As our federal research portfolio shrinks, the infrastructure around it must change in parallel,” university leaders said in a statement. “Last year, we implemented significant cost-management initiatives, including a hiring freeze, pausing annual increases for anyone making over $80,000, reducing discretionary spending, eliminating vacant positions, and reducing our five-year capital project spending by 20%.”
Cuts to foreign aid funding
The university’s March 2025 layoffs, which impacted workers in 44 countries, came after a loss of more than $800 million in funding from the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).
Scholar Robert Dahl, writing back in 1957, once remarked that “Americans are not quite willing to accept the fact that [the Supreme Court] is a political institution and not quite capable of denying it; so that frequently we take both positions at once.”
Generally, the justices have refrained from explicitly commenting on politics. That custom, however, is more a matter of practice and institutional norms than a hard-and-fast rule, and over more than two centuries, justices have at times set it aside while sitting on the bench.
As the current court continues to generate criticism from both sides of the aisle, it seemed relevant to take a deep dive into the (somewhat) rare occasions when justices have openly – and often controversially – done so.
Politics from the bench
In the court’s earliest years, the judicial and political roles were hard to separate – in ways that might shock those who currently accuse the court of partisanship. Besides often being heavily invested in political causes (e.g., campaigning on behalf of elected officials or seeking elected office themselves), the early justices often used addresses to grand juries while circuit riding as occasions for commentary beyond the strictly legal. At that time, such bodies were not simply assembled to decide whether to indict individuals. Instead, the responsible circuit justice would address the grand jurors at the start of each court term, “laying out their duty and the manner in which it was to be performed,” and “lectur[ing] on the role of government, on the implications of the new Constitutional system, and on the jury’s role and responsibility within that system.” Many of these charges were later printed in newspapers and reached a wider audience. In this way, the justices acted as “republican schoolmasters” who saw their role as to “instill a sense of civic virtue in the populace.”
The first chief justice, John Jay, did just that while riding circuit. In May 1790, Jay addressed several grand juries on the (then) “Eastern circuit,” openly contemplating political ideas discussed in the Federalist Papers, such as if men are capable of self-government. Jay was also political in a more explicit sense – he advised President George Washington in both politics and law, and while on the court, negotiated the “Jay Treaty” between the United States and Britain – which helped avert war between the two countries.
But perhaps no early justice tested the limits as far as Justice Samuel Chase. A Federalist who had campaigned for President John Adams in 1800, Chase delivered an 1803 charge to a Baltimore grand jury that criticized Republicans and the Jefferson-aligned Congress for repealing the Judiciary Act of 1801. This repeal, which, among other things, removed 16 circuit judges (most appointed by Adams), meant, according to him, that “the independence of the national judiciary” would be shaken to its foundation. Following this, Chase assailed a new Maryland provision broadening the vote to include individuals without property, saying that it would turn the U.S. into “a mobocracy.”
These overtly political remarks led in part to Chase’s impeachment by the House (specifically, the articles called out his activities as “tending to prostitute the high judicial character with which he was invested, to the low purpose of an electioneering partizan”) and President Thomas Jefferson himself encouraged Chase’s impeachment in a letter to a House member, referencing “the extraordinary charge of Chace [sic] to the grand jury at Baltimore” and asking “ought this seditious & official attack on the principles of our constitution, and on the proceedings of a state, [] go unpunished?”
Then there was Chief Justice John Marshall, who – even while serving as chief justice – remained heavily involved in Federalist politics. Perhaps most remarkably, Marshall held two offices simultaneously after being sworn in as chief, as he continued acting as secretary of state for the final month of the Adams administration. Legal scholars today have noted the conflict of this “double duty,” which was not limited to Marshall (Jay and Chief Justice Oliver Ellsworth served in similar roles). In fact, the case that made Marshall’s legacy, Marbury v. Madison, arose directly from commissions he had failed to deliver in his capacity as secretary of state.
Marshall’s off-bench advocacy didn’t end with the Adams administration, however. After his ruling in 1819’s McCulloch v. Maryland that recognized Congress’ ability to create the Second Bank of the United States pursuant to the necessary and proper clause of the Constitution drew criticism from certain corners, Marshall published a series of nine essays in the Alexandria Gazette under the pen name “A Friend of the Constitution” defending his own opinion. Legal scholars have also debated if Marshall’s conduct there was appropriate.
Posted: Jun 23, 2026 / 12:36 PM CDT, Updated: Jun 23, 2026 / 12:36 PM CDT
Illinois Secretary of State and State Librarian Alexi Giannoulias is awarding more than $27 million in grants to libraries across the state, his office announced in a news release Tuesday.
Since taking office in 2023, Giannoulias has directed more than $183 million in grant funding to support public libraries, school libraries and adult literacy programs throughout Illinois, according to the release.
“Libraries are one of the best investments we can make in our communities,” Giannoulias said in the release. “They help children discover a love of reading, connect job seekers with new opportunities, provide critical access to technology and serve as trusted spaces for millions of Illinoisans.
Giannoulias says the funding comes as libraries nationwide face uncertainty amid efforts by the Trump administration to dismantle the Institute of Museum and Library Services, the primary federal agency supporting libraries.
“Public libraries are often the first places people turn for educational resources, internet access, workforce assistance and lifelong learning opportunities,” Sandra Tomschin, Director of the Cicero Public Library, said in the release. “These investments will help libraries continue meeting the evolving needs of our communities while ensuring patrons have access to safe, modern and welcoming spaces.
“We are grateful for Secretary Giannoulias’ leadership and his commitment to strengthening libraries across Illinois at a time when those resources are needed more than ever.”
Vegetarians need not worry yet—plants will be on Earth for a long time to come. But not forever. The sun will ultimately determine the long-term existence of life on Earth. Its total energy output, called luminosity, has been increasing over epochs and eons by about 10% every billion years—determining much of Earth’s surface temperature. This will continue for billions of years in the future.
The greenhouse effect is the second-largest influence on temperature, determined largely by the concentration of carbon dioxide (CO2) in the atmosphere. Its future is less certain, and that has implications for the long-term survival of plants.
CO2 is naturally removed from the atmosphere by silicate weathering—a chemical reaction of rocks, rainfall and CO2 that creates calcium and bicarbonate, which ultimately drain down rivers and settle on the bottom of the ocean as calcium carbonate.
Through the geologic cycle, this carbon ultimately reappears in the atmosphere via volcanic eruptions. At present, about 130 million tons of carbon is removed by silicate weathering every year, while humans now emit about 90 times that amount.
In a new paper published in Journal of Geophysical Research: Atmospheres, Jacob Haqq‐Misra and Eric Wolf of Blue Marble Space in Seattle determined the future of plants by looking at the long-term future of solar luminosity and CO2 levels in the atmosphere, using a three-dimensional general circulation climate model and considering whether future silicate weathering will be strong or weak.
A person overwhelmed by constant crisis news alerts on their phone while sitting in bed. WP image by WP AI.
Published: May 25, 2026 10:00am EDT
During several recent conversations, people have told me that they’ve stopped checking their phones in the morning. Not because nothing was happening, but because everything was. They described the feeling as standing under a waterfall of perpetual bad news.
Globally, 40 per cent report they at least sometimes or often do the same, the highest figure ever recorded. People shared consistent reasons for this: the news put them in a bad mood, they felt overwhelmed and powerless to act.
As a researcher in developmental psychology, focusing on social development and psychological well-being, I argue that news fatigue is not laziness, weakness or a generational decline in civic interest. It’s the predictable response of a human brain meeting an environment it was never designed to navigate.
Wired for bad news
Long before smartphones or even the printing press, our cognitive architecture was shaped by a single problem: stay alive long enough to reproduce. Our ancestors whose attention drifted past the rustle in the grass left fewer descendants than those who froze, looked and listened.
The brain that paid attention to threats was the brain that survived.
The successful IPO of Elon Musk’s SpaceX may help bring the questionable idea of AI data centers in space closer to the realm of plausibility.
Engineering and technical issues are being solved and SpaceX now has considerably more capital, but economically, the concept remains challenging even as rocket launches become cheaper, though Jeff Bezos and Google are also chasing it.
Long-term, the best argument for data centers in space may be that the cost of building them on Earth is likely to go up over time — while land use, water use, and electricity use all remain points of tension with the public — and all while the cost of building in space may come down.
SpaceX Executives ring the Closing Bell at the Nasdaq on the debut of their IPO on June 12th, 2026. Adam Jeffery | CNBC
Following the astronomical success of the SpaceX IPO — raising $85.7 billion, valuing the newly public company in the trillions, and minting Elon Musk as the world’s first trillionaire — what many skeptics still view as a pie-in-the-sky idea, building AI data centers in space, is coming into view. There is good reason for the skepticism, but the concept has potentially moved onto at least a more plausible path as a result of the SpaceX windfall.
SpaceX has reliable, reusable Falcon rockets — and a more powerful one in the wings — while its xAI has an insatiable need for compute power and its space-based internet service, Starlink, has upgradeable satellites. Now the interconnected entity’s engineering and technology has billions in new capital necessary to bring those components together in space, not only to feed SpaceX’s massive internal AI operations but also to provide commercial services for an array of paying customers such as Anthropic.
Some investors contend the company has no choice but to make the idea work if it hopes to justify its public market valuations over time. “The company comes down to data centers in space,” Duncan Davidson, a partner at Bullpen Capital, said on CNBC’s “The Exchange” the week before the IPO. “That is the big, long-term play.”
The engineering and technical issues are being solved, said Davidson, whose firm is not a SpaceX investor but has an indirect interest in space startup Starcloud. Though he added, “economically, right now, it’s marginal.”
Considering, too, the ever-increasing constraints on terrestrial data centers — practical, political and public — the prospects of launching them into low-earth orbit, where the sun shines 24/7, is no longer the stuff of science-fiction.
If, as Musk has stated, SpaceX’s heavy-duty Starship rocket becomes operational next year — definitely an “if,” given his track record of under-delivering on previously promised schedules — it will greatly lower launch costs, which are a critical barrier to affordability. Meanwhile, the cost of building Earth-based data centers might go up, while “the space ones are going to start getting cheaper and cheaper,” Davidson said. “So I think the [business] case is really strong for these things,” he said.
In January, SpaceX filed an application with the Federal Communications Commission for a constellation of up to one million satellites that would be the foundation for an orbital AI data center. Two months later, at an event in Austin, Texas, Musk reiterated past claims that space-based, solar-powered data centers will be more cost-effective than terrestrial ones in as little as two to three years. “Increasing power on Earth becomes harder over time and more expensive over time,” he said, “but in space it becomes actually cheaper and easier over time.”
The so-called AI1 satellites will be upgraded versions of those used for the existing Starlink communications network and will require exponentially more semiconductors. The sheer scale needed is so massive that SpaceX, Tesla and Intel have partnered to create Terafab, a 10-million-square-foot facility being built in Austin and slated to open in 2029 and which could cost up to $119 billion to build.
Sphere has announced a new cinematic experience in the works, “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
Sphere’s creative team will presumably revamp this 1975 cult classic as it did “The Wizard of Oz,” which has turned out to be a major hit for the venue.
“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” at Sphere is expected to open in 2027.
Sphere surprised everyone with the success of “The Wizard of Oz” and hopes to replicate that success with “The Rocky Horror Picture Show.”
If you haven’t heard of “Rocky Horror,” you’re probably one of our fellow youths.
“The Rocky Horror Picture Show” started humbly as a low-budget, offbeat musical comedy-horror oddity starring Tim Curry, Susan Sarandon, Barry Bostwick and Meat Loaf.
The story: A newly engaged, wholesome couple (Brad and Janet) get stranded in a storm and seek help at a spooky castle, where they meet Dr. Frank-N-Furter, a flamboyant mad scientist from another planet. The plot quickly devolves into seduction, betrayal, murder, random musical numbers and a custom-built boy toy named Rocky. It’s weird and revels in giving repression the finger. Y’know, 1975.
The movie had a budget of $1.2 million. In its opening weekend, it made $21,245 from two theaters. In the parlance of the industry, it was a flop.
While the movie wasn’t a box office juggernaut right out of the gate, it found new life in midnight screenings, where audiences began talking back to the screen, dressing as the characters, throwing props and eventually performing along with the movie in “shadow casts.”
“Rocky Horror” was immersive before that was even a thing.
The movie has become a cultural phenomenon and is one of the most enduring cult movies in history.
It’s a safe space for theater kids, goths, drag queens, nerds and weirdos of all stripes. So, pretty much a perfect fit for Las Vegas.
“Rocky Horror” has now earned roughly $170 million in revenue.
Oscar Diaz and Janelly Mendoza (kneeling), from Laredo, TX, were married on stage on June 11, after a performance of Romeo and Juliet at the Public Theater’s Delacorte Theater in New York Rebecca J Michelson/The Public Theater
An hour before curtain, Oscar Diaz and his fiancée Janelly Mendoza both look a little shell-shocked as they’re being ushered onto the stage of the Delacorte Theater, the Central Park home of Free Shakespeare in the Park in New York.
“I’m Francis,” says actor Francis Jue. Tonight, he not only plays Friar Lawrence in the Public Theater’s production of Romeo and Juliet — he’s also going to be the officiant at Mendoza and Diaz’s real, legal wedding.
The couple, who have known each other since they were children, live in Laredo, Tex. — that’s where they met the Public’s associate artistic director Saheem Ali.
Ali was in Laredo because his Romeo and Juliet is set at the U.S. Mexican border. In it, Romeo’s family is Latino; Juliet’s family supports the border patrol. Ali wanted to see for himself the wall there that separates the two countries.
Mendoza and Diaz “introduced me to the culture,” Ali says. And they told him about a special ritual in border cities. A Mexican citizen and a U.S. citizen will marry on a bridge— each standing in their own country — with an officiant in the middle.
“So I thought, ‘Oh, wouldn’t it be beautiful to actually have a real wedding at the end of the play to mirror Romeo and Juliet’s wedding?'” Ali says. “That marriage didn’t get to see the future. But if we had a real couple who we married at the end, and they got to go into the future, it just gives us all some hope.”
He mentioned the idea to Mendoza and Diaz at the time — they just brushed it off.
“Just regular people like us don’t do that stuff, you know?” Mendoza says. “But then Saheem messaged us. And then it’s like, ‘Okay, it’s happening!'”
Diaz and Mendoza with Jue and the cast of Romeo and Juliet, after the wedding ceremony. Rebecca J. Michelson/The Public Theater
Diaz and Mendoza with Jue and the cast of Romeo and Juliet, after the wedding ceremony.
Illustrations from Poissons, Ecrevisses et Crabes by Louis Renard, 1754. Photograph: Ernst Mayr Library/Museum of Comparative Zoology/ Harvard University/Biodiversity Heritage Library
A bonanza for fans of the natural world: the digital library sharing 64m pages of scientific knowledge with everyone
The Biodiversity Heritage Library is an invaluable online archive of historic texts on species living and lost supplied by the world’s leading museums and universities. Now its future is in doubt
Some go there to read about the wood that Victorian manufacturers used to make walking sticks. Others want to see an illustration of a Tasmanian tiger or marvel at the field diary of one of the first known botanists to explore the Antarctic.
Over the past 20 years, more than 64m pages have been made freely available through the Biodiversity Heritage Library (BHL) – a digital treasure trove for fans of the natural world. More than 680 museums, universities, libraries and scientific institutions from China, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand to Europe, Africa, Mexico, Canada and the US, have contributed to the library.
This week, a report from Royal Botanic Gardens (RBG), Kew revealed the crucial role digitization is playing in “transforming our ability to understand and respond to the climate and biodiversity crises”, but it was the creation of the BHL 20 years ago that first demonstrated how bringing centuries of scientific knowledge online can unlock transformative discoveries and insights about the natural world.
David Iggulden, who chairs the BHL executive committee alongside his job as head of data and digital, library and archives at RBG Kew, describes the library as an invaluable and “absolutely essential” resource for scientists in the field. But it is also used by scientific researchers, environmental historians, educators, art historians, artists, citizen scientists and members of the public who – like Iggulden – simply enjoy browsing its contents on a rainy weekend.
“I just get caught up in it sometimes, looking at the various collections,” he says. “I think it’s amazing that we can explore such a vast array of different collections from very different institutions.”
As well as published biodiversity literature and journals, there are letters, illustrations, climate records, field diaries, ecosystem profiles, distribution records and manuscripts containing the original collecting stories of a particular species or detailing voyages of discovery.
Manuscript on parchment from the Circa instans. Dating from about 1190, it is the oldest book in the digital library. Photograph: LuEsther T Mertz Library/New York Botanical Garden/Biodiversity Heritage Library
The oldest book is one of the earliest western medical manuscripts, a medieval pharmacopeia known as the Circa instans, which dates back to approximately 1190. Considered a fundamental text in the development of modern botany, it helped to provide clarity across medieval Europe by standardizing plant names and their uses, and was digitized by the New York Botanical Garden last year.
Another highlight for Iggulden is an 1892 illustrated exhibition catalogue by Henry Howell & Co, a Victorian firm based in London, which marketed itself as the world’s largest manufacturer of walking sticks.
The illustrated exhibition catalogue of Henry Howell & Co. Photograph: Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew/Biodiversity Heritage Library
Catalogues such as this are helpful for scientists studying plants used for economic purposes, as well as the importance and characteristics of wood, and how wood has been used over history, he says. “It’s a really fascinating find – and quite different to what you’d expect in the BHL.”
Watercolour sketches from Sir Joseph Hooker’s illustrated Antarctic journal. Photograph: Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew/Biodiversity Heritage Library
One of the most significant books in the collection is the botanist Sir Joseph Hooker’s illustrated Antarctic journal, which includes his watercolor sketches of two volcanoes, first sighted in 1841 on his expedition to the continent with Capt James Clark Ross. “It’s the personal account of Hooker’s adventure … to the Antarctic and the sights he saw there,” says Iggulden.
Being able to share such unique, handwritten manuscripts with the world fulfils one of the key aims of the BHL, says Nicole Kearney, who leads the Australian branch of the library, based at Museums Victoria. “I once uploaded a handwritten field diary about birds in Australia, and someone who was studying the flooding of the river in the region wrote to me and said: ‘you’ve just given me this incredible resource where I’m able to tell every time this river flooded between 1947 and 1957’ because it was written down in this diary in the mid-20th century – which I thought was all about birds.”
It is considered to be the earliest known publication in colour on fish, yet about 10% of the species are actually completely fantastical
Nicole Kearney
During the pandemic, historical journals uploaded to the BHL helped scientists to show that there had been a “massive change” in the distribution and abundance of rare Australian orchids during the “black summer” of the wildfires, in late 2019 and early 2020. “That meant that those orchid species could be reassessed and their threatened species status was changed as a result,” Kearney says.
Handwritten pages from the 1947-1957 Australian ornithological field diaries of A Graham Brown. Photographs: Museums Victoria/Biodiversity Heritage Library
When she talks about the role that BHL plays for scientists, she often quotes Charles Darwin: “The cultivation of natural science cannot be efficiently carried on without reference to an extensive library.”
She says: “I’m sure Darwin would agree that, in today’s world, it is essential that we can access the world’s biodiversity knowledge online. And that this knowledge is freely accessible for everyone.”
One of her favourite books in the collection is The Mammals of Australia by the British naturalist John Gould, published in 1863. It features an arresting illustration of a Tasmanian tiger, a native Australian marsupial which was hunted to extinction after it was – perhaps erroneously – blamed for killing sheep. “The last one died in a zoo in Tasmania in 1936,” says Kearney. “It was such a stunning creature. It had a pouch but looked very much like a dog or wolf with stripes. There is nothing else like it in Australia, it’s like nothing in existence today.”
The entry for the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, in The Mammals of Australia (1863), by British naturalist John Gould. Photographs: Smithsonian Libraries and Archives/Biodiversity Heritage Library
The BHL Flickr album is followed by tens of thousands of people and highlights some of the more unusual copyright-free illustrations in its collection (some of which have been turned into an award-winning jigsaw puzzle app, The Art of Fauna).
One popular album is Louis Renard’s 18th-century book, Poissons, Ecrivisses et Crabes, which was uploaded to the BHL in 2016. It features an illustration of a mermaid and other imaginary creatures mixed in among the scientifically accurate representations of real fishes, crayfishes and crabs.
The mermaid and another imaginary creature illustrated in Poissons, Ecrevisses et Crabes by Louis Renard, 1754. Photograph: Ernst Mayr Library/Museum of Comparative Zoology/ Harvard University/Biodiversity Heritage Library
“It was originally published in 1719 and is considered to be the very earliest known publication in colour on fish, yet about 10% of the species are actually completely fantastical,” says Kearney. “It’s a really important part of scientific literature from the age of enlightenment, [when] people were going out and reaching parts of the world that had never been seen before. Artists would interpret what people had told them and they would copy drawings from other artists who may not have ever seen the species,” says Kearney. “They believed they were all real.”
The BHL was born 20 years ago after librarians came up with a radical idea to improve global research into climate change and biodiversity loss at a transformative moment in internet history. It was the dawn of web 2.0, when using the internet for networking and socializing was starting to become fashionable, and a sense of optimism and opportunity was in the air. What if 10 prominent museums and institutions in the UK and the US digitized their historic biodiversity literature collections to create one online library that every scientist around the world could access for free?
At the time, the idea of working internationally on a mass digitization project was “really revolutionary”, says Iggulden.
Obama Center opens in Chicago with a call to defend democracy and a celebrity crowd
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Former President Barack Obama, joined by three former presidents, celebrated the opening of his presidential museum in Chicago. The event brought together world leaders, A-list celebrities, athletes and other internationally known figures.
Former President Barack Obama, joined by three former presidents, celebrated the opening of his presidential museum in Chicago. The event brought together world leaders, A-list celebrities, athletes and other internationally known figures.
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The Obama Presidential Center opens in Chicago to the general public on Juneteenth after a celebratory dedication in Chicago with dignitaries. (AP video by Obed Lamy)
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Former President Barack Obama, right, shares a laugh with former first lady Michelle Obama, left, on stage during the dedication ceremony for the Obama Presidential Center, Thursday, June 18, 2026, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)
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Former President Joe Biden, from left, former President Barack Obama, former President George W. Bush, and former President Bill Clinton, pose for a photo ahead of the dedication ceremony at the Obama Presidential Center, Thursday, June 18, 2026, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais, Pool)
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Former President Barack Obama, back center, and former first lady Michelle Obama, right, arrive on stage with their daughters, Sasha and Malia Obama, during the dedication ceremony for the Obama Presidential Center, Thursday, June 18, 2026, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Jeff Roberson)
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Former President Barack Obama reacts to remarks by former first lady Michelle Obama during the dedication ceremony for the Obama Presidential Center, Thursday, June 18, 2026, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Alex Brandon)
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People watch the dedication ceremony for the Obama Presidential Center from Midway Plaisance, Thursday, June 18, 2026, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Nam Y. Huh)
Former President Barack Obama formally opened his presidential center in Chicago on Thursday with a call to defend democracy as three former presidents joined him on stage in an extraordinary event featuring politicians, A-list celebrities, athletes and other internationally known figures.
“I hope this center will serve as an affirmation of just how special, how precious our democracy truly is and remind us what we can achieve when we embrace our shared responsibilities as citizens,” the nation’s first Black president told the crowd.
Bono, John Legend, Christina Aguilera, Marc Anthony and Eddie Vedder took turns on the stage ahead of Bruce Springsteen and Stevie Wonder, who closed the show singing “Higher Ground” as the former presidents, world leaders and others danced along.
President Donald Trump was conspicuous both in his physical absence and by not being mentioned by any of the speakers or performers. Trump called the $850 million center a “total disaster” in a social media post in February.
Obama voiced his support for character, honesty, integrity, kindness, compassion and sense of duty, praising both Democrats and Republicans, including those he defeated.
“Every president here today, as different as we are, has tried our best to uphold values that John McCain and Mitt Romney believed in no less than I did,” Obama said. “It is our greatest inheritance.”
Reflecting on his arrival in Chicago in 1985 as an untested political organizer, he said he could not have built the Obama Presidential Center anywhere else. He met his future wife Michelle nearby, their wedding reception was within walking distance, his children were born in the neighborhood and he launched his first candidacy not far away.
“It’s an expression of thanks, an acknowledgment that so much of what I hold most dear I owe to the people of this city and the people of the surrounding neighborhoods,” Obama said.
Michelle had some emotional words for her husband
The Obamas and their daughters shared the stage with former presidents Joe Biden, George W. Bush and Bill Clinton along with former first ladies Jill Biden, Laura Bush and Hillary Rodham Clinton. Former Vice President Kamala Harris and many other leading Democrats were in the audience.
Michelle Obama spoke directly to her husband when she stepped up to the podium. “Eight years in the crucible and not once did you melt in the heat. Not once did you let it harden you.
“Instead, you used it to reveal your truest essence,” she said. “Your stubborn optimism and unflinching courage. Your dazzling brilliance and unpretentious decency. Your ferocious work ethic and absolutely unshakable moral fiber. And to do it all as a first.”
She ticked off highlights from her husband’s eight years in office, including ordering the raid that led to the killing of Osama bin Laden, “standing up for marriage equality” and “listening to science.”
“And you did it all with such grace and class and cool,” she said. “You made the hardest job in the world look like a walk in this beautiful park.”
Obama appeared to wipe away a tear as she praised him.
Michelle Obama also referenced the current “anxious and divisive times” and warned against being cynical or complacent as “everything feels so upside down.” She pitched the center as “a respite from all that.”
Ranked: U.S. Population Growth by State (1970–2025)
See visuals like this from many other data creators on our Voronoi app. Download it for free on iOS or Android and discover data-driven charts from a variety of trusted sources.
Key Takeaways
Nevada’s population surged 572% since 1970, making it America’s fastest-growing state by a wide margin.
Population growth was concentrated across the Sun Belt and Mountain West, led by Arizona, Florida, Texas, and Utah.
Most Northeastern and Midwestern states grew far more slowly, while Washington, D.C. was the only region to lose population overall.
America’s population shifted dramatically toward the South and West between 1970 and 2025, reshaping the country’s economic and political landscape.
States across the Sun Belt and Mountain West saw explosive growth as Americans moved toward lower-cost housing, warmer climates, and expanding job markets. Meanwhile, many Northeastern and Midwestern states posted comparatively modest gains.
Nevada recorded the fastest population growth in the country, expanding by 572% since 1970. The state’s transformation was largely fueled by Las Vegas evolving from a tourism-centered economy into a broader metropolitan hub with expanding healthcare, logistics, construction, and business sectors.
Arizona ranked second, growing by 329%, while Florida nearly tripled its population over the same period.Search:
Rank
State
Growth
1970 population
2025 population
1
Nevada
572%
488,738
3,282,188
2
Arizona
329%
1,775,399
7,623,818
3
Florida
246%
6,791,418
23,462,518
4
Utah
234%
1,059,273
3,538,904
5
Idaho
185%
713,015
2,029,733
6
Texas
183%
11,198,655
31,709,821
7
Colorado
172%
2,209,596
6,012,561
8
Georgia
146%
4,587,930
11,302,748
9
Alaska
144%
302,583
737,270
10
Washington
134%
3,413,244
8,001,020
11
North Carolina
120%
5,084,411
11,197,968
12
South Carolina
115%
2,590,713
5,570,274
13
New Mexico
109%
1,017,055
2,125,498
14
Oregon
104%
2,091,533
4,273,586
15
California
97%
19,971,069
39,355,309
Much of this growth came from Americans relocating away from higher-cost states in search of cheaper housing, lower taxes, warmer weather, and expanding job markets across the South and West.
The Rise of the Sun Belt
The biggest winners over the last 55 years were concentrated across the Sun Belt and Mountain West. Texas, Utah, Colorado, Georgia, and the Carolinas all more than doubled their populations as jobs and affordable housing drew in new residents.
Texas added more than 20 million residents between 1970 and 2025, more than the current population of New York state.
The state’s diversified economy, including energy, technology, manufacturing, and finance, helped fuel sustained growth across major cities like Houston, Dallas, Austin, and San Antonio.
Florida’s growth story was similarly dramatic. Beyond retirees, the state attracted workers and businesses seeking lower taxes and lower living costs compared to coastal Northeastern states.
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Looking ahead: Mozilla has recently made efforts to revitalize the Firefox project. The free, independent browser is expected to undergo significant changes over the next few months, and the company is now sharing some of the ideas its developers are working on. With any luck, it will be enough to stop Firefox from losing millions of users every month.
Mozilla is trying to innovate and bring new features to Firefox, but the browser continues to lose users. Despite these concerning market trends, the company is actively working to improve the ailing browser, so much so that it has published a new roadmap highlighting the most important changes coming to the project.
Mozilla recently introduced the roadmap alongside the changelog for Firefox 152. The latest release already includes some of the improvements listed in the roadmap, while other features have been announced for the first time.
The Firefox roadmap organizes upcoming changes by category. The “Productivity” section includes the previously announced Nova design refresh, tab group support on mobile platforms, and customizable keyboard shortcuts. PDF editing is also set to improve significantly, with new capabilities for splitting, merging, and reordering files.
Mozilla said customizable keyboard shortcuts are one of the most requested features in terms of browser customization. Firefox has always emphasized security and privacy, which is why future releases will bring a built-in VPN feature to mobile devices as well. For iOS users, Firefox will soon offer basic ad and tracker blocking without requiring external add-ons.
Firefox 152 introduced a redesigned Settings page, while optional AI tools are expected to soon include a “Quick Answers” feature that allows users to interact with chatbots using voice commands. Mozilla says Firefox is taking a different approach to AI than other browsers, and that users will remain in control of the LLM-based capabilities available in the software.
Performance, built-in safety protections, and new web API support will also be a major focus of upcoming releases. The latest version introduced experimental support for the JPEG XL image format, and HDR video support is finally arriving on Windows and Linux systems. Firefox users have been requesting proper HDR media playback support in the browser for more than six years.
I have this daydream where I go to the park and read under a tree. The sun is shining. It’s not too hot. The ground beneath me is comfortable. I have snacks on hand, I’m hydrated, and I am captivated by the book in front of me.
Life Kit
Used to be an avid reader? How to get back into books
The problem is it doesn’t usually pan out like this. Two minutes in, I’m sweating, my butt hurts from sitting on tree roots, I realize I forgot the snacks and I can’t focus. So I close the book, go home and turn on the TV.
Perhaps you’ve had the same experience. We think reading should feel romantic, like this landmark event in our day.
“But if you wait for all those moments, you’re never going to finish a book,” says Kevin Nguyen. He’s the author of My Documents and New Waves,and is a reading evangelist. In 2017, he wrote a popular article for GQ magazine titled “How to read a whole damn book every week.”
The point here? Allow yourself to read whenever, wherever.
There’s a lot more you can do to start or restart a reading habit. A neuroscientist, the organizer of a children’s book festival and the host of a book podcast share their best advice.
Look for smaller opportunities to read throughout the day
Standing on the train platform? There’s a few minutes to read. In a long line for lunch? You can get a few pages in! Read when you’re early to school pickup or when you’re waiting for your clothes to be done at the laundromat.
Don’t forget your commute, Nguyen says. “You’re driving to work? It’s audiobook time. You get on the subway? It’s time to open the book, not play video games on your phone or listen to a podcast.”
Put books all over the place and always have one with you, and “pretty soon you’ll pick one up and start reading,” says Juanita Giles, executive director of the Virginia Children’s Book Festival.
“I have an upstairs book and a downstairs book and a car book and a bathroom book and a bathtub book,” she says.
Opt for the paper version to minimize distractions
This is a tip from Maryanne Wolf, a cognitive neuroscientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of Reader, Come Home: The Reading Brain In A Digital World.
When you read on your phone, you’re just one moment away from a text, an email or a news alert. Even if you turn those off, you might go looking for other entertainment on your browser or social media, just out of habit.
You also may default to your typical screen behaviors — like skimming for information, which Wolf says “is one of the greatest disruptions of deep reading.” (For more deep reading tips from Wolf, listen to her Life Kit interview here.) So if you’re trying to get back into reading and have the option, choose paper.
Match the book you want to read with the time you have available
Because books have different textures and demand different kinds of attention, it’s smart to read something lighter when you’re at the DMV, for instance.
“Some books can be read quite quickly. Siddhartha can be read a lot faster than Narcissus and Goldmund or poetry,” Wolf says.
It’s OK to stop reading the book if you don’t like it
“If you’re falling asleep, checking your phone or rolling your eyes as you’re reading the sentences, that might be a good sign that you don’t like what you’re reading,” says Traci Thomas, creator and host of the book podcast The Stacks.
“So put the book down. Save yourself. There are too many books in the world to read. That is called ‘cultivating taste,'” she says. (Thomas shares more tips with Life Kit on how to find the perfect book. Listen to the episode here.)
This episode was produced by Sylvie Douglis. The visual editor is CJ Riculan. We’d love to hear from you. Email us at LifeKit@npr.org. Listen to Life Kit on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, and sign up for our newsletter.
By Unknown photographer – This image has been extracted from another file, Public Domain, Link to Wikipedia…
By Julia Cooke, June 18, 2026
In this episode, we welcome Julia Cooke to discuss her new book, Starry and Restless: Three Women Who Changed Work, Writing, and the World, which profiles three pioneering women journalists: Rebecca West, Emily “Mickey” Hahn, and Martha Gellhorn.
Cooke explores these writers’ shared temperament and celebrates their work as a forerunner to New Journalism. Throughout our interview, we learn about Gellhorn: her life before Hemingway entered the scene (in a letter, she would describe her younger self as “starry and restless”), her short-lived relationship with Hemingway, and her later years in which she adopted a son and experienced a rather complicated motherhood. Cooke also immerses us in Gellhorn’s writing, focusing on how her war journalism weaves together harrowing scenes with humanizing details and how her witnessing of Dachau toward the end of WWII was truly transformative.
Editor’s Note: You can also listen and enjoy on Spotify. I embedded the audio below. –DrWeb
Editor’s Note: Image of Martha from Wikipedia article, By Unknown photographer – This image has been extracted from another file, Public Domain, Link
Research into the neuroscience of social rejection has shown that the brain regions that activate when a person is excluded, rejected, or grieving a lost relationship are the same regions that activate during physical injury, with the overlap being so substantial that a standard over-the-counter painkiller measurably reduces both kinds of pain, because the human brain has co-opted the physical pain system to register damage to social bonds
The popular framing of emotional pain treats it as something metaphorical. The broken heart of unrequited love, the sting of rejection, the ache of grief, the cutting remark, the wound that will not heal: the language…
The popular framing of emotional pain treats it as something metaphorical. The broken heart of unrequited love, the sting of rejection, the ache of grief, the cutting remark, the wound that will not heal: the language of physical injury used to describe emotional injury is so widespread across cultures and languages that it has been treated, until quite recently, as a poetic convention rather than a scientific claim. People who use the language to describe their suffering are usually understood to be reaching for a metaphor that captures something about the intensity of what they feel.
The peer-reviewed neuroscience of the past two decades has substantially complicated this picture.
What the brain imaging evidence has shown, across multiple research teams, multiple methodologies, and multiple populations, is that emotional pain is not metaphorically similar to physical pain. The two states activate substantially overlapping neural systems, produce substantially similar behavioral and physiological responses, and respond to substantially the same pharmacological interventions. The language of broken hearts and stinging rejection is, on the strongest current reading of the evidence, more literally accurate than the popular framing has assumed.
The two other players were not, in fact, human. They were computer-controlled. The exclusion was a designed feature of the experiment. From the participant’s subjective experience, however, they had just been deliberately excluded from a social activity by two people they had been interacting with moments earlier.
The brain activation pattern during the exclusion phase was the most significant finding of the study. The dorsal anterior cingulate cortex, a region of the brain that processes the affective component of physical pain, was significantly more active during exclusion than during inclusion. The level of activation correlated positively with the participant’s self-reported distress at being excluded. The same region of the brain that becomes active when a person is burned, cut, or struck became active when the same person was ignored in a virtual ball-tossing game.
The Eisenberger team’s interpretation, supported by the subsequent literature, was that the human brain treats social exclusion as a form of injury. The neural alarm system that evolved to alert humans to physical damage to their bodies is, on the available evidence, the same alarm system that alerts humans to damage to their social bonds.
Participants in the first experiment took either 1,000 milligrams of acetaminophen, the active ingredient in Tylenol and Panadol, or a placebo, every day for three weeks. They reported their daily experience of social pain (feelings of rejection, exclusion, hurt feelings) on a standardized scale throughout the study period. The participants who took acetaminophen reported significantly lower social pain than those who took placebo, with the difference emerging gradually over the three weeks and becoming statistically significant by the end of the study.
The second experiment, also with three weeks of acetaminophen or placebo, used functional magnetic resonance imaging at the conclusion of the dosing period. Participants played the same Cyberball exclusion game while being scanned. The acetaminophen group showed significantly reduced neural activation in the dorsal anterior cingulate cortex and the anterior insula during the exclusion condition, compared with the placebo group. The pharmacological intervention designed to reduce physical pain had reduced both the felt experience and the brain activation associated with social pain.
America’s 150th Birthday Celebration Was Deemed the Nation’s ‘Greatest Flop.’ What Went Wrong With the Sesquicentennial?
Philadelphia politicians hoped to replicate the success of the 1876 Centennial Exposition. Instead, the 1926 world’s fair lost millions of dollars, essentially bankrupting the city on the eve of the Great Depression
By Meilan Solly | Senior Associate Digital Editor, History June 16, 2026
A century ago, the first visitors to Philadelphia’s Sesquicentennial International Exposition—held to mark the 150th anniversary of the United States’ founding—waded through mud and wandered along unpaved sidewalks to reach the heart of the fairgrounds, only to find carpenters still at work on half-finished exhibition halls and gaping holes marking the spots where attractions had yet to be built.
Dining and shopping options were limited, and some of the few exhibits on view stretched the very definition of “entertainment.” One was a model Post Office where “you could go send yourself a letter and watch it get canceled,” says historian Thomas H. Keels, author of Sesqui! Greed, Graft and the Forgotten World’s Fair of 1926. “That was it.”
The 200,000-plus Shriners in town for their fraternal organization’s national convention realized that their parades and rallies were the main events planned for these early days of the fair. Many went home disappointed, telling family and friends that the exposition wasn’t worth visiting.
“The show is still in a state of undress, not ready at all to answer the doorbell,” a California newspaper reported. Speaking with Philadelphia’s Bulletin, an Iowa man likened the fair to a birthday dinner held by an acquaintance back home. “He got so darned excited about how many he was going to have, invitations, his speech of welcome and the program of entertainment,” the tourist recalled, “he plumb forgot to order any grub. … But the fellow had a sense of humor. ‘Come around next birthday and we’ll have something to eat,’ said he. Maybe I will.”
Held in Philadelphia between May 31 and December 31, 1926, the fair—referred to as the Sesqui—celebrated the 150th anniversary of the United States’ founding. Little remembered today, the event was a financial failure that Variety deemed “America’s greatest flop.” Exact figures are hard to come by, but Keels suggests that the fair lost the equivalent of more than $410 million in today’s dollars, effectively bankrupting the city of Philadelphia.
Attendance at the Sesquicentennial Exposition also failed to match the numbers of Philadelphia’s 1876 centennial celebration, which attracted roughly 20 percent of the country’s population in an era when planes, cars and luxury liners had yet to make long-distance travel more accessible. Organizers predicted that 30 million people would visit the 1926 fair; ultimately, fewer than five million paid to attend.
Quick facts: American world’s fairs by the numbers
At the other end of the spectrum, the 1907 Jamestown Tercentennial Exposition drew fewer than three million visitors, making it “the most sparsely attended American world’s fair of the 20th century,” Keels writes in Sesqui.
What doomed the sesquicentennial? Poor planning and lukewarm reviews by the fair’s early visitors contributed to the disastrous outcome. So, too, did the streak of bad weather that plagued Philadelphia during the exposition’s run, with rain falling on more than half of the days the fair was open to the public.
Although some observers considered the lackluster public response a sign that the golden age of world’s fairs had come to an end, Chicago’s 1933-34 Century of Progress Exposition proved this prediction wrong, drawing more visitors than any of its predecessors. Overall, Keels attributes the 1926 fair’s failure to its “association with what was being viewed as an increasingly corrupt political machine,” headed by Pennsylvania Republican William Scott Vare.
After the fair incurred “nationwide ridicule,” Keels tells Smithsonian magazine, Vare and other local politicians were eager to move on from the endeavor, selling off leftover structures piecemeal “for pennies on the hundreds of dollars.” This push to forget the sesquicentennial has reverberated into the present: Just one building constructed for the 1926 fair stands in Philadelphia today.
“When I started to write my book,” Keels says, “I was looking for sources, and I would ask people who were very knowledgeable historians, and the immediate response was, ‘Oh yeah, the centennial, Memorial Hall in Fairmount Park.’ And it’s like, ‘No, the other one.’” They’d ask, “‘What other one?’”
Two framed diplomas showcased in a traditional wooden library setting. AI image via WP AI.
Here is a clean, scannable breakdown of the evolution of library degrees in American higher education. This layout is designed to copy and paste directly into a Facebook comment or use as a cheat sheet to cut through the confusion. This post was created in response to a Facebook question on the topic. My own Master’s degree was not noted; I hold the Master of Librarianship from the University of South Carolina. –DrWeb
📜 The Evolution of American Library Degrees
Historically, the American Library Association (ALA) does not accredit a specific acronym; it accredits the educational program itself. Over the last 140 years, the names have shifted alongside technology.
1. Late 1800s to 1920s: The Apprenticeship Era
The Origin: Training began as practical certificates or technical school diplomas.
Bachelor of Library Economy (B.L.E.) / Bachelor of Library Science (B.L.S.): Early formal programs (starting with Melvil Dewey at Columbia in 1887) were actually undergraduate or second-bachelor degrees focused on “library economy” (cataloging and classification mechanics).
2. 1920s to 1950s: Standardizing the Profession
The Shift: Following the landmark 1923 Williamson Report, library training moved firmly into research universities.
Master of Librarianship: Advanced degrees began emerging.
Bachelor of Library Science (BLS): Still remained common as a post-baccalaureate fifth-year degree during this period.
3. 1950s to 1980s: The “MLS” Golden Age
The Shift: In 1951, the ALA adopted new standards making a Master’s degree the formal requirement for professional librarians, phasing out undergraduate credentials.
Master of Library Science (MLS): Became the gold standard absolute requirement for school, public, and academic librarians.
Master of Science in Library Science (MSLS) / Master of Arts (MA): Variations depending on whether the university housed the program in its Science or Liberal Arts graduate school.
4. Late 1980s to 2000s: The Digital/Information Age
The Shift: The internet and computers radically transformed the field. Library schools rebranded as “Schools of Information” (or iSchools) to avoid sounding obsolete.
Master of Library and Information Science (MLIS) / Master of Library and Information Studies (MLIS): The “I” was explicitly added to reflect database management, digital archives, and technology.
5. 2010s to Present: The “iSchool” Modern Era
Master of Information (MI) / Master of Science in Information (MSI) / MSIS: Today, many top programs have dropped the word “Library” from the degree name entirely to reflect data curation, UX design, and information architecture — even though they still graduate traditional librarians.
🪪 Where Associate and Bachelor Degrees Fit
Associate of Library Technology (AAT / LTA): Trains Library Technical Assistants. These graduates handle essential frontline operations, circulation, and tech support, but generally do not hold the title of professional “Librarian.”
Bachelor of Science in Library Science: Still exists at a small handful of institutions, primarily for preparing undergraduate students specifically for K-12 School Media Specialist state certifications.
💡 The Ultimate Takeaway for Your Post:
“Because of this alphabet soup (MLS, MLIS, MSLS, MIS, MI), the job market and human resource departments have largely abandoned hiring based on specific acronyms. Today, the universal standard requirement for a professional librarian is simply: ‘A Master’s degree from an ALA-accredited program.’ It doesn’t matter what letters are on your diploma, as long as the program carries that accreditation.”
Some time later, we learned the story of when Hemingway first visited Finca Vigía. He saw a group of boys playing baseball in the street and asked them, “Why don’t you play inside?” — referring to the large open field on the property.
“We can’t. The dogs chase us away,” one boy replied.
And Hemingway answered, “I promise you that if I ever live on this estate, it will become the home of all the neighborhood boys.”
The last time we saw him remains vivid in my memory. We were standing near the swimming pool. He touched us on the head — including several girls who were with us — and said: “Write our story.”
“What story?” I asked.
“The mangoes, the cat, the guerrilla . . .” he answered.
The English translation of the book inspired by Alfredo A. Ballester’s childhood encounters with Hemingway
Then he turned his back to us and walked toward the house, leaning on his long cane. He stopped, waved at us from a distance, and shouted: “Ah! And don’t forget to write about when you wet yourself. That will make you famous.”
One of the girls immediately repeated: “He says you wet yourself?”
Embarrassed, I said the first thing that came to mind to save my pride: “Don’t listen to him. That old man is crazy.”
“The American” told us he had to travel and that even if he wasn’t at the estate, we could still come in. And if they did not let us through the gate, we already knew how to get inside.
But that turned out not to be true.
After that day, they stopped letting us in. We still sneaked in sometimes.
But Hemingway never came back. We never saw him again.
When we learned of his death, we went to the estate, but this time we were not allowed inside as we had been before during his absences. When we insisted, several soldiers guarding the property told us that if we entered, we would be arrested.
Hemingway — “the American” — was an extraordinary neighbor in the town of San Francisco de Paula. There are many stories about sick neighbors whom Hemingway helped without hesitation, paying for medicine and medical expenses.
Yet how could a man who fished in the deepest and most dangerous Gulf Stream waters, hunted lions in Africa, survived multiple illnesses, car accidents, and two plane crashes — a man who lived through three wars (World War I, the Spanish Civil War, and World War II), and who was often described as a braggart — also possess such a gentle and humane side?
How could that same man spend his final years sharing mischief and adventures with children?
Today, more than half a century later, those neighborhood boys who once ran through the estate are now old men — some are no longer with us.
And when we stop to read Hemingway’s life and work, we realize that “the American,” within the refuge of Finca Vigía, was completely different from the man the world saw outside it.
The word came down on June 15, 2026, and it landed hard on both coasts. Fox Corporation — Lachlan Murdoch’s lean, live-content machine — announced it was acquiring Roku, Inc., the streaming platform sitting inside more than 100 million households worldwide, for approximately $22 billion in enterprise value. The price: $160 per share, a mix of cash ($96) and Fox Class A stock (roughly 0.97 shares per Roku share), representing a 33.7 percent premium over where Roku was trading before the news broke. When the deal closes — expected in the first half of 2027, pending regulatory and shareholder approval — Fox shareholders will own about 73 percent of the combined company, Roku shareholders the rest.
This is not a small deal. This is a civilizational bet on who gets to own the living room.
We want to look at this from three very different seats: the investor’s desk, the competitive landscape, and the couch. Because this deal reads completely differently depending on where you sit.
The Money View: A Smart Play or a $22 Billion Mistake?
AI image by Gemini.
Let’s start where the real pressure is: with the people whose capital is on the line.
Fox is funding the cash portion — roughly $96 per Roku share across the outstanding float — with a combination of new debt and cash on hand. Morgan Stanley Senior Funding has already committed $12 billion in bridge financing. That is a serious debt load being strapped onto a company that has been, by most accounts, disciplined in its spending since Rupert Murdoch sold the studio and entertainment assets to Disney in 2019.
Lachlan Murdoch built a leaner Fox on live content — sports, news, Tubi — precisely because he watched rivals drown in streaming red ink. Disney burned billions chasing Netflix. Warner Bros. Discovery spent years unwinding a disastrous merger. Paramount lurched from suitor to suitor before finally finding a landing pad. Fox, meanwhile, stayed profitable, generated cash, and bought Tubi for around $440 million in 2020 when free ad-supported TV was still considered a niche curiosity.
Now Murdoch is doing it again at fifty times the scale. The strategic thesis is coherent: the U.S. connected TV advertising market is projected to reach roughly $60 billion by 2030, growing at 8 percent annually. Streaming subscriptions will approach $85 billion. Roku, as the operating system running on 44 percent of U.S. CTV viewing hours, is effectively the tollbooth on that highway.
Fox — with NFL, MLB, NASCAR, Big Ten, FIFA World Cup, Fox News, and the fast-growing Tubi in its portfolio — generates the premium live content that fills that highway with cars. Marrying the two creates what Murdoch called “a scaled media and technology platform with superior reach, engagement, and monetization capability.” That is deal-announcement language, but it is not wrong.
The synergy math that Fox is presenting is, by their own admission, conservative: $400 million in run-rate cost savings, with unquantified revenue upside on top. The combined entity would carry roughly $21 billion in pro forma revenue over the last twelve months, including approximately $9 billion in combined advertising revenue. Roku contributed about $2.5 billion of that ad revenue on its own in the last year. Add Fox’s $6.5 billion in advertising and you have the makings of a genuinely formidable ad-sales shop. Fox says the deal will be accretive to free cash flow per share by the second full year after closing — the standard promise in deals like this, but the Tubi acquisition suggests Fox actually knows how to integrate streaming assets without breaking them.
The risk is real, though. Taking on $12 billion in bridge financing on a $22 billion deal — while promising to maintain investment-grade credit ratings and continue share buybacks and dividends — is a lot of balls in the air simultaneously. The regulatory environment is another wildcard. The current administration has shown both appetite for aggressive antitrust enforcement and selective indifference to it; media consolidation at this scale, touching both content distribution and the platform through which viewers discover content, is exactly the kind of vertical integration that draws scrutiny. This deal will not sail through untouched.
For pure equity investors: Roku shareholders got a 33.7 percent premium. That is real money, and the deal was unanimously approved by both boards. Fox shareholders are being asked to dilute their position — Fox will issue approximately 152 million new Class A shares — but they’re getting scale, data, and a CTV infrastructure play that no amount of organic investment could replicate in a comparable timeframe. On balance, this is a credible deal for the money people, with execution risk that is neither trivial nor disqualifying.
The Market View: Consolidation as Endgame
AI image by Gemini
Step back from the balance sheet and look at what this means for the streaming industry as a competitive structure.
2026 has already been described by analysts as a defining year of streaming consolidation, and the Fox-Roku deal is exhibit A. The observation from Forrester analyst Mike Proulx — that “streaming is no longer just about quality content slates; it’s about controlling the full stack” — is exactly right, and exactly what this deal accomplishes.
Fox will now control what viewers watch (its content), how they discover it (the Roku home screen, which Murdoch himself called “the beachfront property in the streaming ecosystem”), and how that attention gets monetized (Roku’s ad exchange, data cloud, and performance marketing infrastructure). That is a formidable vertical.
The context matters: Amazon has Prime Video on Fire TV. Apple has its content behind the Apple TV platform. Google has YouTube and Android TV. Comcast has Peacock and its own smart TV operating system ambitions. The pattern is everywhere — tech and media companies racing to own the delivery mechanism as much as the content, because distribution lock-in is where durable margin lives. Fox was the last major legacy content player without its own distribution infrastructure. It now has the largest one in the United States by CTV operating system share.
The competitive implications ripple outward. Netflix, Disney+, and Max are all currently available on Roku. They must remain available — Roku’s platform value depends on being a neutral aggregation point — and Fox has specifically promised to run Roku as a “partner-friendly” platform. But let us be clear-eyed: “partner-friendly” is a posture that could bend under competitive pressure. If Fox decides that its own content — Fox One, Tubi, The Roku Channel — gets preferential placement on the Roku home screen, streaming rivals have a problem. Home screen real estate on a platform reaching more than half of U.S. broadband households is not a trivial advantage. It is everything.
The sports rights angle is particularly sharp. Fox holds the NFL, MLB, NASCAR, Big Ten, and the FIFA World Cup. Fox One — their premium sports streaming product — quietly landed on The Roku Channel as a premium subscription on May 26, 2026, just weeks before this deal was announced. That was not a coincidence. The discovery and amplification of live sports rights through Roku’s home screen is, as Murdoch put it, a concrete example of the deal’s logic made visible. When you own the rights to the Super Bowl and the platform through which it reaches 100 million households, the value of both assets multiplies.
The broader market effect: expect further consolidation. If Fox can do this, Paramount’s successor entity — whatever form it eventually takes — will need a distribution answer. So will AMC Networks, so will smaller FAST (free ad-supported TV) players. The streaming market has been fragmenting for years; the Fox-Roku deal is the most visible signal yet that the fragmentation phase is ending and the consolidation phase is beginning in earnest. The question is not whether more deals follow — it is which ones, and how fast.
The Consumer View: Aggregation Sounds Great Until It Isn’t
Now let’s talk about the person who bought a Roku stick at Target for $29.99 and stuck it in the back of the living room TV.
In the short term, the consumer story is not bad. Roku has committed to operating as a platform-neutral aggregator — all your streaming apps, one interface, intuitive search, decent discovery. That is the product people bought into, and Fox has every incentive to maintain it because Roku’s value derives entirely from its scale, and that scale evaporates the moment users feel the platform is rigged toward Fox content. Anthony Wood, Roku’s founder, called the combination “an extraordinary opportunity to accelerate our vision, scale faster and innovate more aggressively for viewers, partners and advertisers.” That is the right thing to say, and it may even be true in the near term.
But the consumer should keep their eyes open, because there are real structural concerns embedded in this deal that deserve honest scrutiny.
The first is advertising. Roku’s business model is built on selling your attention — your viewing data, your behavioral profile, your demonstrated preferences — to advertisers at scale. That model works because Roku’s first-party data is extraordinarily rich: it knows what you watch, when you watch it, how long you linger, and when you abandon something. Fox’s advertising ambitions layer on top of that. The combined company will have roughly $9 billion in advertising revenue and a data stack that would make Madison Avenue’s mouth water. Performance marketing tied to Amazon e-commerce data is already in the mix. The consumer is not the customer in this transaction. The consumer is the product. That has always been true of ad-supported streaming, but the scale and sophistication of what Fox and Roku are building together deserves acknowledgment.
The second concern is pricing and access. Today, Roku is a neutral platform. You can subscribe to Netflix, Disney+, Max, Peacock, Apple TV+, Paramount+ — everything — through Roku, and Roku takes a share of those subscriptions. That model depends on Fox playing fair with competing content. If the competitive pressure eventually leads Fox to use home screen placement, search ranking, or data advantages to steer viewers toward its own properties — Tubi, The Roku Channel, Fox One — consumers will feel it, even if they can’t name why their Netflix always seems harder to find than it used to be.
Third: Roku hardware and licensing costs. Roku licenses its operating system to smart TV manufacturers — TCL, Hisense, Sharp, and others. A Fox-owned Roku is still likely to maintain those licensing relationships, but the platform’s neutrality is now a promise made by a content competitor, not an independent technology company. The TV manufacturers who’ve built their smart TV products on Roku’s OS have reason to reassess their dependency. If they start hedging toward Google TV, Amazon Fire, or proprietary systems, the Roku ecosystem itself fragments — which is bad for everyone, including Fox.
None of this is inevitable. Lachlan Murdoch is not stupid, and he is not building a walled garden — that is not the strategy this announcement describes. But history does not offer many examples of media companies acquiring neutral distribution platforms and keeping them neutral indefinitely. The incentive structure pulls in one direction: toward preferring your own content, your own advertisers, your own data advantage.
The Bottom Line
A news anchor discusses Fox and Roku’s user monetization and revenue growth. AI image by Gemini.
This is a consequential deal, executed by a company that has proven it can be disciplined with acquisitions, at a moment when the streaming landscape is consolidating around a simple new logic: you need to own the pipe as much as the water that runs through it.
For Fox shareholders, the thesis is credible — high-risk on execution, but strategically coherent in ways that much of the media industry’s recent M&A activity has not been. For the streaming market, this is a seismic event that accelerates the endgame. For the consumer — for every household that has a Roku stick plugged into the back of the TV — the short-term experience probably does not change much. The long-term experience depends on whether Fox can resist the gravity of preferential treatment once they own the room.
Murdoch says Roku pioneered streaming TV and that together, they intend to lead its next chapter. That may be true. But whoever leads the next chapter of streaming will also write the rules. And those rules will be written by a company whose core identity is built around news and sports — not neutrality.
Watch the home screen. That is where this story ends, one way or another.
DrWeb covers periodically the streaming digital media industry, library and information science, and Democracy and civic technology at DrWeb’s Domain. Views expressed are the author’s own professional analysis, aided by Claude AI.
“If the United States chooses to attack another NATO country militarily, then everything comes to an end,” the Danish Prime Minister said. Illustration by Bendik Kaltenborn
On a Saturday afternoon in Nuuk, Greenland, last March, a thousand people walked down toward the harbor, to a small red cabin that bore the Great Seal of the United States—an eagle grasping an olive branch in one foot and thirteen arrows in the other. The air was freezing, and the town was bathed in the crisp Arctic light of a late-winter sun. After almost seven decades with no diplomatic presence in Greenland, the U.S. had opened a tiny consulate in 2020, during the pandemic; now, less than two months into Donald Trump’s second term as President, it was the site of the largest demonstration in Greenlandic history.
This piece was supported by the Pulitzer Center.
Even before Trump retook office, he had made clear his intent to annex Greenland. But, from the moment that he was sworn in, his fantasies and provocations became American foreign policy. “One way or another, we’re gonna get it,” he told a joint session of Congress. So five per cent of Nuuk’s residents stood before the consulate, beating traditional drums and chanting their country’s Inuit name: Kalaallit Nunaat. “Enough is enough,” they shouted. But no one from the State Department drew the blinds. It wasn’t clear that anyone was even there.
Across town, in the commercial center, a lone American handed out flyers. He wore a cowhide jacket and pants, mirrored sunglasses, and a black leather vest with a patch that read “Bikers for Trump.” He was tall and fit, with gray curls and a short mustache, and presented himself as a kind of unofficial ambassador—not of the U.S. government but of its President, whose cellphone number he claimed to have. “My name is Chris Cox. I’m from the United States, and I have come here to try to make some friends,” he said to an elderly Inuit man. “We are not looking at you like a tiger looks at a gazelle.”
Cox had founded Bikers for Trump in 2015, and the group had provided security at campaign rallies and at Trump’s first Inauguration—“a wall of meat,” as he put it, between protesters and the unlikely candidate who became President. When Trump lost the 2020 election, Cox spoke at a rally to call for overturning the result. “I, for one, will take the first bullet,” he said. “If there’s anybody out there from Antifa or Black Lives Matter, spend your first fuckin’ bullet in my chest.” But in Nuuk he struck a more conciliatory tone. “We are not biting at the chomps,” he said. “I just plan on doing the best we can to have an influence here.”
“He wasn’t really breaking any laws,” a senior Greenlandic police official told me later. But Cox’s interactions were inherently provocative. “Without knowing it, a lot of the Greenlanders are living in the Stone Age,” he told an Italian TV channel.
“I’m receiving a lot of death threats as a result of my work here in Greenland,” Cox noted, a few days into his trip. “People are looking at me like I’m a Russian with a machine gun right now, when they see the Trump patch.” By that point, Greenlanders had started wearing red caps with white text that read “Make America Go Away.” Nevertheless, Cox considered his mission to be fruitful. “I’ve got some suggestions for how we can clean this up,” he said, in a phone call from Nuuk to the Washington Times. “We need to change the hearts of some of these Greenlanders.”
Cox left Nuuk for Washington, D.C., where he claims to have briefed the White House and Republican lawmakers on his findings. He also did a prime-time interview with One America News Network, portraying Denmark, whose realm includes Greenland and the Faroe Islands, as an illegitimate colonial power that is committing “atrocities” against Greenlanders and “weaponizing” anti-Trump propaganda to turn people against the U.S. “Unfortunately, the natives, the Inuits and the Greenlanders, in my opinion, are suffering something we call, here in America, Stockholm syndrome,” he said.
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Ranked: Which States Are Leading America’s Economy?
Key Takeaways
Massachusetts ranks as America’s strongest state economy in 2026, ahead of Washington, Utah, and California.
Sun Belt states including North Carolina, Texas, Florida, and Georgia now rank among the country’s economic leaders.
Innovation, entrepreneurship, and talent attraction continue to separate the highest-performing states from the rest of the country.
America’s biggest economies aren’t always its strongest.
While California, Texas, and New York dominate in economic size, long-term competitiveness depends on a broader mix of factors, from business creation and labor market strength to innovation and investment.
This 2026 analysis by WalletHub evaluates all 50 states and Washington, D.C. across 28 indicators of economic activity, economic health, and innovation potential. This ranking highlights the states that are building the foundations for future growth.
Where Every State Ranks in 2026
The ranking below evaluates the economic strength of all 50 states and Washington, D.C. in 2026: entries per pageSearch:
Rank
State
Total State Economy Score 2026
1
Massachusetts
69.4
2
Washington
67.3
3
Utah
65.9
4
California
65.0
5
Delaware
63.0
6
North Carolina
60.3
7
New York
57.6
8
Texas
57.0
9
Colorado
56.4
10
Florida
54.3
11
Idaho
53.4
12
Georgia
53.1
13
New Hampshire
52.9
14
Virginia
51.2
15
Arizona
51.1
Showing 1 to 15 of 51 entries
Why Massachusetts Leads the Ranking
Massachusetts outperformed larger states including California, Texas, and New York thanks to its combination of innovation output, STEM talent, and business formation.
It is also home to many of the nation’s fastest-growing tech companies, with business creation propelled by its innovation-driven economy and world-class universities.
Despite being the nation’s 15th-most populous state, Massachusetts is well-positioned to drive innovation and economic growth as technology rapidly accelerates.
Innovation Is the Biggest Separator
The 10 highest-ranking states differ significantly in geography, politics, and industry mix. However, they share a common strength: generating new ideas and new businesses at a considerable rate.
Like Massachusetts, Washington is powered by technology and research. Notably, software developers rank as Washington’s most common occupation. California remains the epicenter for AI giants and venture capital activity. Utah is now one of the country’s fastest-growing tech hubs, with cost-of-living-adjusted median household income reaching $91,600, the highest in the nation.
In contrast, many of the lowest-ranked states produce fewer high-growth companies due to lower investment levels, fewer patents, and less-developed innovation ecosystems.
The New Geography of Growth
One of the clearest patterns in the ranking is the continued rise of the Sun Belt. North Carolina, Texas, Florida, and Georgia all rank among America’s economic leaders, reflecting years of population growth, business investment, and job creation.
North Carolina ranks sixth overall, ahead of New York and Colorado. In 2025, it gained a net 84,100 residents, the highest in the country. Texas places eighth, while Florida and Georgia also rank among the top 15. Tennessee and South Carolina also finish comfortably in the upper half of the ranking, while both states recorded some of the strongest domestic migration gains last year.
The result is a broader shift in America’s economic map. While coastal innovation hubs remain dominant, many Southern states are becoming important centers of growth in their own right.
I can’t quit Google News — but these 5 things make me want to
Google News is great, but with these five features, it could be even better.
By June 14, 2026
Google News is easily one of the most popular news aggregators on the planet, with more than a billion Android downloads and over 100 million monthly visits to its web platform. With aggregated content from over 20,000 publishers, there’s a lot to love about Google News. Of course, there’s also plenty to complain about.
I personally use Google News as my go-to source, but I certainly wish a few things were handled a little differently. With that in mind, here are five features I think Google News desperately needs to add.
Is there any new feature you’d like to see come to Google News?
Technically, your search preferences already follow across your account to some degree, but there’s very limited control over this. You might also argue that Google News already has something like this with the Following feature.
While this sort of works similarly, following a source simply adds it to the Following tab, and it has zero impact on the main feed. I’d love the ability to make my preferred sources the ones that are most common across not only the Google News main feed but all the sub-sections as well.
True blocklisting
Google makes it fairly easy to “hide all stories” from a source on paper; in reality, it’s very different. You’d think selecting this option would mean you’d never again see anything from this source, right? Not so much, as it turns out.
While it does make these sources show up in fewer places, you’ll still find hidden sources in the “Full Coverage” aggregated story cards and the top story carousels within the app. If you don’t want to see articles from a particular publisher, you shouldn’t be forced to do so just because Google’s algorithms are overly aggressive.
Topic-specific keyword blocking
While true blocklisting would be a massive upgrade to the current Google News experience, I’d also really like it if Google News took a page out of Feedly’s playbook by introducing its own topic-specific keyword filter. For those who don’t know, Feedly AI lets you mute company names, products, or keywords.
Even better, Feedly lets you set time frames to temporarily avoid certain topics. For example, maybe your favorite series is coming back for another season, but you won’t be able to watch until much later. Google is obviously no stranger to AI and already uses some AI features in Google News, so I feel like this would be a natural fit.
Charlotte, once known for steakhouses and company-credit-card dinners, is chasing recognition for its evolving food scene, investing millions in exposure through “Top Chef” and Michelin.
Why it matters: There are some criteria for building a food-city reputation that money can’t buy. Few people can succinctly describe Charlotte’s culinary identity. The debate sounds awfully familiar.
“Charlotte itself is still finding its identity,” says Evan Diamond, aka Charlotte Foodie Guy. “Unlike places that built their food culture over generations around one cuisine or specialty, Charlotte is a mix of influences from all over.”
Charlotte is historically a trading-post town.
That’s reflected in menus with Appalachian, Piedmont and Lowcountry influences.
“It’s one of the most accessible food cities in the country,” Diamond says. “Some of the best meals here aren’t in fancy dining rooms. They’re in strip malls, food halls, food trucks and family-owned restaurants.”
What they’re saying: Southern food journalist Erin Perkins says eating in Charlotte used to be an “afterthought” when she visited the city.
“Now that’s the first thing I think about,” she says. “There’s so much now that I want to try, what’s new and what’s happening, and I don’t want to just stay at my hotel in Uptown at the Capital Grille.”
Yes, but: Ask anyone Charlotte’s signature dish, and answers range from pimento cheese to livermush to Bojangles. I asked around and got no consensus.
“People love Charlotte because you can easily get to the mountains, you can get to the coast,” says Jamie Brown of Tonidandel-Brown Restaurant Group. “We don’t need a signature dish, and nor would it be to our benefit to have one, because then you’re not very diversified.” Jeff Tonidandel says Charlotte’s diversity of produce, stemming from its seasonality, may be among the scene’s greatest strengths.
“It means we get foraged ramps in the spring, and we get citrus from Charleston in the winter,” Tonidandel says. “We don’t need one specific dish to hang our hat on.”
The other side: There’s a difference between a culinary destination and a city with some good restaurants, says Robert F. Moss, a Charleston-based food writer. It’s hard to say what a visitor can find in Charlotte that they can’t find in their hometown.
“I don’t see it as really standing out on its own as ‘I really need to go to Charlotte to eat,'” Moss says. “Charlotte is still working on what its culinary identity is going to be.”
Zoom out: Charleston’s food scene blew up around 15 years ago from publicity. It’s also invested heavily in promoting its food scene.
Follow the money: Since around 2018, the Charlotte Regional Visitors Authority has ramped up efforts to catapult Charlotte’s food scene into the national spotlight.
“We just need to let more people experience Charlotte,” Tonidandel says. “We have a lot of momentum.”
North Carolina tourism offices agreed to pay $345,000 solely for the chance to be included in the Michelin Guide. The gamble resulted in Michelin awards to Counter- and Lang Van.
To recruit “Top Chef,” CRVA spent $1.2 million from its annual $9.7 million paid media budget. Production also got $2.5 million in state film incentives.
But while “Top Chef” highlighted Charlotte’s skyline, the season looked broadly at the Carolinas. It leaned into themes like coastal seafood and whole-hog barbecue, which are not necessarily Charlotte-specific.
By the numbers: Food is critical to tourism. CRVA attributes 25% of all visitor spending to food and beverage.
CRVA says efforts are paying off. Search terms like “best food in Charlotte” are up 52%.
The bottom line: Charlotte may possess the same ingredients Charleston did back in the early 2000s to achieve food-city status. Good restaurants, growing talent and people starting to pay attention.
The difference is that Charleston knew what its culinary identity was before the Bon Appétits and the Food & Wines showed up.
“Our story is very much being written still,” CRVA’s chief brand and strategy officer Laura White says.
The last resort standing in Primm may not close after all: At the eleventh hour, an operator has swept in to save the Primm Valley Casino Resorts on the border of California and Nevada.
Since the COVID pandemic, the unusual town of Primm, best known for its casinos and towering roller coaster, has struggled. Right off Interstate 15 on the way between Los Angeles and Las Vegas, visitation has steadily decreased over the last five years. Buffalo Bill’s and Whiskey Pete’s recently closed, and earlier this year, it was announced that operations would cease at Primm Valley Casino Resorts, the last resort in the town.
But last week, the Primm family announced another local family is taking over operations at the hotel, which was slated to close by July 4. The new operator is Terrible’s, a gas station and convenience store giant owned by the Herbst family. Terrible’s is no stranger to the area. They used to own the Terrible’s Hotel and Casino in nearby Jean, where the family still boasts the world’s largest Chevron gas station.
Cory Clemetson, who is the grandson of Primm’s founder Ernie Primm, said in a press release that the two families are “doing everything possible” to prevent the hotel from closing in July. The resort’s previous operator, Affinity Gaming, planned to shut down the location by early July.
Clemetson told Fox News that they’re “very bullish” on the future prospects for the town, as construction is set to begin on the Southern Nevada Supplemental Airport by 2029. The airport is supposed to relieve pressure on Harry Reid International Airport, and it will be located about 20 miles south of the Strip. “We’ll be the only game in town for the airport for people to stay,” Clemetson said.
In order to stay operating, Terrible’s will need to be issued a gaming license by the state of Nevada. On June 25, the Nevada Gaming Control Board will hold a special meeting to discuss approvals.
“This partnership reflects our commitment to preserving that legacy while creating new opportunities for growth, investment and tourism for decades to come,” Terrible’s president Tim Herbst said in a press release. “We believe Primm’s best days are still ahead.”
The image highlights key public health and democracy issues to consider in the 2026 midterm elections. AI image by WP AI.
Webinar
Defending Democracy in the 2026 Midterms: What Public Health Needs to Know
July 7, 2026
Executive Override: How the Trump administration is using federal power to deceive Americans, disrupt our elections, and deny fair results — and what we can do to stop it.
This webinar, presented by Protect Democracy for APHA members, will explore how, for the first time in modern American history, the machinery of the federal government — which is meant to serve the people and protect the democratic process — is being turned against our elections. This unprecedented power now fuels and endeavors to build upon the subversion strategies developed in 2022 and 2024: deceive voters about the trustworthiness of election systems, disrupt the operation of those systems, and use the ensuing chaos to deny election outcomes they don’t like.
Dig into this new analysis from Protect Democracy on the threats to the 2026 midterms and their strategy to stop them. They will break down the “Deceive, Disrupt, Deny” framework currently being used to subvert the 2026 cycle, and explore the ways that the public health sector can step up to stop it.
The administration is counting on our silence, our confusion, and our despair. None of us need to do everything — all of us can do something. We hope you join us for this important conversation.
Editor’s Note: This is a hard piece to write. We had a path, and lost it. We had a game 6, and lost it. There will be no game 7 in 2026 for VGK. I have been a fan since the inaugural season in 2018, ups and downs, coaching changes, won Cup 2023, and back three (3) years later in 2026. They failed, they were crushed by Carolina, beaten to a pulp. They had nothing. No score, no goals, lousy, limited shots. What did Gretzky say: “The famous hockey quote is “You miss 100% of the shots you don’t take,” and it is credited to Wayne Gretzky, widely considered the greatest hockey player of all time. They moved the puck, did not shoot. Fear? Paralyzed? Frightened of failure? Who knows? Let’s review some recent and older information about the series, the Cup in 2026, Carolina, and VGK. What went so wrong? How to fix without scraping the whole damn lot of them? I was aided in the research and analysis below by Google’s Gemini. I reviewed and edited the article. –DrWeb
The Mirage of Muscle
How Carolina’s Modern Speed Exposed Vegas’s Exhausted Core and the Institutional Failure of Anticipatory Obedience
An Editorial Essay by DrWeb’s Domain • June 15, 2026
I. The Autopsy of an Inevitability
The final, hollow clang of the horn on Sunday night at T-Mobile Arena did not signal an upset; it completed an execution. As the Carolina Hurricanes spilled over their boards to celebrate a clinical, devastating 3-0 shutout victory in Game 6 of the 2026 Stanley Cup Final, the dominant atmosphere within the fortress was not shock, nor even simple grief.
It was an overwhelming, suffocating sense of exhaustion. The Vegas Golden Knights did not merely lose a hockey game, nor did they simply surrender a championship on home ice. They collapsed under the compounding weight of their own archaic structural philosophy, thoroughly exposed by a younger, leaner, and systematically superior adversary. The narrative spun by the uncritical echelons of mainstream sports journalism will undoubtedly rely on the lazy platitudes of “puck luck,” “hot goaltenders,” and the cruel variance of postseason bounces. But the truth is far more structural, far more institutional, and infinitely more damning: Vegas was too old, too slow, and physically bankrupt when the ultimate price was demanded.
To view the series as a sequence of isolated tactical failures is to miss the entire systemic rot that doomed this run. For three rounds, the Golden Knights bludgeoned their opponents using a heavy, grinding, veteran-heavy roster that had been engineered for short-term dominance at the explicit cost of future sustainability.
It was a Faustian bargain struck by a front office that has historically treated draft capital and youth as mere currency to buy established, high-mileage star power. But when that heavy machinery encountered Carolina’s relentless, high-tempo, modern transitional game, the biological clock caught up with terrifying velocity. In the modern National Hockey League, structural velocity is the ultimate arbiter of performance; heavy legs do not merely look like poor positioning, they manifest as mental errors, structural fragmentation, and an absolute paralysis of creative offensive output.
The systematic breakdown across the final three matches of the series—all of them decisive, demoralizing losses for Vegas—offered a case study in athletic decay. The transition from a 2-1 series lead following an emotional double-overtime victory in Game 3 to a three-game freefall was a testament to how quickly an older roster’s energy reserves can completely evaporate under pressure.
The tracking metrics, which mainstream sports broadcasters routinely sanitize for public consumption, revealed an catastrophic drop in maximum skating velocity, a total failure to win loose puck battles in the neutral zone, and a complete breakdown in defensive containment. Vegas looked like a relic of an era when raw physical mass sufficed to dominate the low-rent real estate of the crease, while Carolina operated with the terrifying, synchronized fluid dynamics of contemporary precision engineering.
This editorial project refuses to accept the standard boilerplate corporate explanations issued during the post-game press conferences, where phrases like “we gave it our all” and “they’re a good team over there” serve as an iron curtain to shield management from accountability.
The failure of the 2026 Golden Knights is a structural failure that demands an adversarial investigation. It requires us to examine not only the tactical arrogance of a coaching staff that prioritized ideological conformity over empirical performance, but also an organizational culture that remains structurally blind to the physical realities of age, fatigue, and the high-octane demands of contemporary athletic conditioning. The Mirage of Muscle has faded, leaving behind nothing but an empty sheet of ice and a mountain of maximum-salary obligations tied to players whose best days are permanently recorded in the past tense. Losing a major, good player like William Karlsson for Game 6 was bad, but it was not why they lost, not at all.
II. The Inexcusable Offensive Blackout
When an organization commits over $30,000,000 in annual salary-cap space to three individual forward assets, it does not do so to secure regular-season accolades or comfortable first-round triumphs. It purchases the explicit guarantee that when the environment becomes toxic, when the space suffocates, and when the season hangs by a thread, these elite units will manufactured offensive production out of sheer force of will.
In this fundamental duty, the Golden Knights’ top-tier vanguard did not simply fall short; they enacted a vanishing act of historic proportions. Over the final three consecutive matches of the Stanley Cup Final—the exact crucible where legacies are forged or shattered—the maximum-wage stars of the franchise completely withdrew from the scoresheet, presenting an offensive vacuum that crippled any hope of defensive survival.
Consider the raw mathematical indictment of the team’s offensive core during the three-game collapse that concluded the series. These figures represent more than a mere cold streak; they are a mathematical demonstration of an elite infrastructure running entirely out of fuel:
Asset Classification
Games 4–6 Goals
Games 4–6 Assists
Plus / Minus Metric
On-Ice Expected Goals %
Mitch Marner
0
1
-5
38.2%
Jack Eichel
0
0
-4
41.5%
Mark Stone
0
1
-3
35.9%
To have your three primary offensive pillars combine for zero goals and a cumulative minus-12 rating over three straight elimination games is an institutional disgrace.
The collapse of Mitch Marner’s offensive utility was particularly jarring. After teasing the fan base and the media with a historic, record-breaking hat trick in Game 3—a performance that modern content engines hyped as a definitive shedding of his historical postseason demons—Marner reverted to the exact brand of perimeter-bound, low-danger play that has haunted his spring career.
Once Carolina’s coaching staff adjusted by shortening their defensive gaps and aggressively challenging the half-wall during the Vegas power play, Marner’s options evaporated. Lacking the raw acceleration required to break the hands of physical defenders, he spent the remainder of the series executing soft, hope-filled backhand chips into crowded defensive structures.
Similarly, Jack Eichel’s utility deteriorated from dynamic transitional hub to a static, easily contained puck-carrier. Carolina deployed an aggressive, two-man tracking system designed explicitly to strip Eichel of his speed through the neutral zone. Rather than adjusting by adopting an unselfish dump-and-chase architecture or utilizing late trailers, Eichel repeatedly attempted to carry the puck through three-man layers, resulting in a disastrous sequence of turnovers at the blue line that fueled Carolina’s counter-attack.
The captain, Mark Stone, skated with the visible agony of a player whose biological frame can no longer support the structural demands of his hockey intelligence. His legendary hand-eye coordination and defensive positioning were rendered useless because he simply could not arrive at the point of contact in time to affect the play. The offense did not stall by accident; it was strangled by an opponent that recognized its complete lack of physical velocity.
The failure of the power play during this stretch serves as an indictment of structural rigidity. Vegas went 0-for-11 with the man advantage across Games 4, 5, and 6. The entry patterns became so predictable that Carolina’s penalty killers were routinely waiting at the drop-pass drop-off point before the Vegas skaters had even turned their shoulders. There was no internal audit, no tactical mutation, no willingness to inject a high-energy youth asset to disrupt the rhythm.
The coaching staff stood on the bench with arms folded, practicing an operational inertia that looked less like patience and more like a total capitulation to the opponent’s tactical setup. When your highest-paid workers refuse to enter the high-danger areas of the ice because the physical tax is too high to pay, your offense is not experiencing a slump; it has accepted defeat.
III. Too Old, Too Slow: The Training and Conditioning Deficit
The contemporary National Hockey League is governed by an unyielding kinetic equation where force equals mass multiplied by acceleration. For nearly a decade, the Vegas Golden Knights focused entirely on physical size, constructing an identity centered around massive, suffocating defensemen and heavy, physical wingers who won games through territorial attrition. This design philosophy assumes that a team can grind an opponent down over a seven-game series, using physical punishment to degrade the opponent’s skating efficiency.
What management failed to realize is that if the opponent possesses an elite base level of speed, your physical contact becomes impossible to initiate. You cannot hit what you cannot catch. Throughout the Final, the Golden Knights looked less like a modern championship contender and more like an archaic, over-trained, under-conditioned collection of veterans running on empty fumes.
The skating data sourced from micro-chip tracking exposes the complete physical insolvency of the roster. By the third period of Game 4, Vegas’s average zone-to-zone transition speed had dropped by an astonishing 14% compared to their first-round baselines. Carolina’s dropped by less than 3%. This discrepancy points directly to a profound failure in the organizational training, recovery, and sports science departments.
A roster built on older assets requires a hyper-sophisticated, highly individualized load-management and conditioning framework. Instead, Vegas appeared to be operating under a traditional, uniform, old-school methodology that burned out the players’ glycolytic systems during the early rounds, leaving them entirely devoid of the anaerobic capacity needed to combat Carolina’s continuous four-line pressure.
This physical deficit manifested across three specific, fatal areas on the ice:
The Lost Races to Loose Pucks: In the third periods of Games 4 and 5, loose pucks in the neutral zone that should have resulted in 50-50 battles were recovered cleanly by Carolina 74% of the time. Vegas defenders were consistently forced to pivot and retreat, giving up territory because their initial foot-speed was non-existent.
The Degradation of the Close-Out Gap: Because the Vegas defensemen lacked the recovery speed to handle Carolina’s outside speed, they began backing off early, conceding the blue line and allowing the Hurricanes to enter the zone with clean, unimpeded possession. This passive defensive posture invited prolonged and lengthy defensive-zone shifts that further drained the team’s energy reserves.
The Exhaustion Penalties: When an athletic asset is outpaced, its natural response is to use its stick to compensate for its legs. Vegas took nine minor penalties for hooking, holding, and tripping during the final three games—every single one of them a direct consequence of a skater being caught out of position and reaching out in desperation to slow down a faster opponent.
The failure of the team’s physical preparation becomes even more inexcusable when contrasted with the resources at their disposal. The Golden Knights boast a state-of-the-art training apparatus, yet their performance indicated an institutional inability to translate modern sports science into sustained on-ice endurance. They prepared for a war of attrition that the opponent refused to fight, showing up with heavy armor to a race that required lightweight agility. When an entire roster looks uniformly slow, it is no longer an individual issue; it is an organizational failure of preparation, training, and strategic forecasting.
IV. The Doctrine of “Anticipatory Obedience” on the Bench
While the physical collapse of the athletes was visible to everyone in the arena, the intellectual failure occurred on the bench. It was orchestrated by a coaching staff trapped within its own ideological prison. When John Tortorella was hired on March 29 to replace Bruce Cassidy, the move was celebrated by traditionalist media elements as a injection of discipline, accountability, and veteran savvy.
What it actually introduced was a rigid tactical dogma that proved entirely incapable of dynamic real-time adjustment. The most damaging manifestation of this rigidity was the coaching staff’s handling of the goaltending position—a display of stubbornness that crossed the line from loyalty into professional malpractice.
The data regarding Carter Hart’s performance during the Stanley Cup Final is historically catastrophic.
By conceding four or more goals in five consecutive Final games, Hart achieved an NHL record that no goaltender ever wishes to hold. He was a visibly broken player, systematically exploited by Carolina’s pre-scouted strategy of attacking his blocker side and generating high-to-low cross-seam passes that forced him into lateral movements his lower body could no longer execute cleanly.
Yet, sitting on the bench was Andi Hill—a proven, championship-winning asset who had carried this exact franchise to its 2023 title, a goaltender who understood the unique pressure of the market and possessed the physical frame to handle Carolina’s net-front screens.
Why did the change never occur? The answer lies in the concept of anticipatory obedience—a psychological phenomenon where decision-makers adhere strictly to an established plan or authority figure, ignoring all empirical evidence that contradicts the plan, out of a fear of the institutional disruption that a change might cause.
Tortorella had chosen Hart as his definitive number-one option; to pivot to Hill would be an admission that his initial assessment was flawed, an act of tactical surrender that his ego could not accommodate. When a courageous reporter dared to challenge this strategy after the Game 5 blowout, Tortorella’s response was classic defensive theatricality:
“Oh, for Christ—that could be the stupidest question I’ve heard in these playoffs. Carter is our guy. We win with him, we die with him. Next question.” — Head Coach John Tortorella, June 11, 2026
This quote should not be remembered as a display of bold leadership; it must be filed as the definitive epitaph of the series. It represents a complete abandonment of empirical coaching in favor of blind, dogmatic adherence to a failing plan. By declaring that the team would “die with him,” Tortorella fulfilled his own prophecy, forcing his exhausted skaters to play in front of a goaltender whose confidence had completely evaporated.
This institutional silence, this refusal to pivot when the house was visibly on fire, is the exact opposite of high-integrity leadership. It is an example of an elite hierarchy preferring a predictable catastrophe over an unpredictable adjustment.
The coaching failure extended beyond the crease. Tortorella’s public attempt at psychological warfare—his arrogant declaration that he was leaving his personal wardrobe at the hotel in Raleigh because a Game 7 was an absolute certainty—served only to provide the Carolina Hurricanes with an elite source of motivation.
It was a classic example of an old-school coach using an outdated psychological trick that has zero utility in a modern locker room filled with analytical, self-aware athletes. The Hurricanes did not just beat Vegas on the ice; they dismantled Tortorella’s psychological structure, returning his arrogant words with a clinical 3-0 shutout performance that left the veteran coach looking small, out of options, and completely disconnected from the realities of the modern game.
V. The Institutional Silence and the Road Ahead
The final, most disturbing component of this championship failure is the predictable, compliant behavior of the local and national sports media. In the hours following the Game 6 defeat, the coverage has been an exercise in narrative sanitization.
The institutional press, dependent on team access and corporate credentials, has systematically avoided assigning accountability to management or the coaching staff. They present the loss as a noble tragedy, a case of an exhausted group running out of time against a worthy opponent. This complicity is the exact brand of sports journalism that *The DWD Editorial* is designed to dismantle. When the press acts as a public relations arm for a multi-billion-dollar sports franchise, it betrays its primary duty to the community that funds these institutions through tickets, merchandise, and emotional investment.
The reality that must be faced is that the Vegas Golden Knights have reached a dangerous point of structural diminishing returns. The “win-now” methodology has created an old, expensive roster that lacks the dynamic youth assets required to survive the modern, high-tempo NHL calendar. The franchise’s cap structure is locked into declining assets, while their draft cupboard remains barren. To fix this structural deficit will require an aggressive, painful restructuring of the organization’s core philosophy. It requires moving away from the culture of superficial celebrity acquisitions and committing to a comprehensive infrastructure built on speed, developmental patience, and modern sports science. And note, the dumping instead of any team loyalty, to their franchise star Jonathan Marchessault, 192 goals in regular seasons, is still mysteriously wrong. it shows the owners only care about now –not history, not service to the team, not to loyalty. Again, like all modern professional sports –those things no longer exist. It’s only about money.
The road ahead is further complicated by the complete vacuum of leadership on the bench. John Tortorella’s post-game refusal to commit to his future with the organization reveals a coach who knows his methods have reached their expiration date.
The front office cannot afford to spend another season chasing the ghosts of old-school hockey philosophy. The modern game belongs to the fast, the analytical, and the adaptable. Until the Vegas Golden Knights recognize that muscle without movement is nothing but a monument to past achievements, they will continue to watch younger, faster organizations hoist the Stanley Cup on their ice. The time for corporate excuses is over; the era of adversarial audit has begun.
Multimedia Evidence & Field Tape
For full editorial transparency and to review the tape of the tactical collapses discussed in this essay, consult the following authenticated digital records:
Trump’s changes to history at national parks must be undone, judge rules
June 13, 2026 / 11:19 AM EDT / CBS/AP
President Trump’s effort to rewrite the past at the country’s museums, parks and landmarks was struck down on Friday, with a federal judge calling for the administration to restore changes already made at locations nationwide.
The preliminary injunction issued by U.S. District Judge Angel Kelley in Massachusetts also orders a pause on any additional changes, writing that the plaintiffs have shown these efforts are meant “to rewrite the Nation’s history with a white-out pen.”
“Under the guise of promoting American dignity, this Administration seeks to share a limited history by ordering the removal of all signs, displays, and interpretive exhibits at National Parks that do not align with its preferred narrative, thereby telling half-truths,” Kelley wrote.
The Trump administration issued an executive order, entitled “Restoring Truth and Sanity to American History,” in March 2025 ordering national parks to not display elements that “inappropriately disparage Americans past or living.”
However, Kelley countered that Trump’s order was just an excuse to erase the true history of the United States.
“History cannot be faithfully told while excluding the experiences of communities whose contributions, struggles, and achievements form an important part of our Nation’s story,” Kelley wrote.
The Trump administration must also provide a status report every week describing the progress they’ve made with these changes, the judge wrote. The administration has 21 days to “restore and reinstall all interpretive materials at park sites managed by the NPS that, pursuant to the Secretary’s Order, have been altered, removed, or damaged in the process of such removal since May 20, 2025,” according to the order.
Panels that were part of an exhibit on slavery at the President’s House Site in Independence National Historical Park are put back, Feb. 19, 2026, in Philadelphia. Joe Lamberti /AP, FILE
The order comes in response to a February lawsuit filed by conservation and historical organizations over National Park Service policies that the groups say have forced park service staff to remove or censor dozens of exhibits that share factually accurate and relevant U.S. history and scientific knowledge, including about slavery and climate change.
Many of the changes were at Philadelphia’s Independence National Historical Park, where the administration removed exhibits on the lives of nine people enslaved at the site in the 1790s under George Washington, the first U.S. president. Other changes included removing a sign at Sunset Crater Volcano National Monument in Arizona describing basalt bubbles because it had an image of a visitor holding a Pride flag while films on labor history were removed from the Lowell National Historical Park in Massachusetts.
Mr. Trump signed the executive order last year and Interior Secretary Doug Burgum later directed removal of “improper partisan ideology” from museums, monuments, landmarks and other public exhibits under federal control.
An email seeking comment from the Interior Department was sent Saturday.
Alan Spears, senior director for cultural resources for the National Parks Conservation Association, one of the organizations that brought the lawsuit, said the ruling will help protect national parks from the administration’s effort “to erase history and science at these one-of-a-kind places.”
“National parks belong to the American people and censorship of any kind goes against the values these places represent,” he said.
Bill Wade, executive director for the Association of National Park Rangers, another organization that brought the lawsuit, said this is especially good news for National Parks employees who “have prided themselves for being able to provide truthful, accurate and unbiased information.”
The Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., in April. Tyrone Turner / WAMU
The U.S. Supreme Court is heading into its crunch time, the part of the year when the justices are racing to finish decisions and dissents in the cases that remain undecided.
There are 23 cases left, out of the 58 that have been argued. Two major cases have already been decided: One essentially gutted what remained of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act, prompting Republicans in a number of Southern states to redraw congressional maps to diminish or eliminate majority-Black districts that have elected Black members of Congress.
The second major case that has been decided struck down President Trump’s tariff program because the court said Congress had not authorized it, and Trump exceeded his authority in doing it on his own.
Many of the most difficult and controversial cases, however, remain to be decided in the coming weeks, with the justices aiming to conclude their work by the end of June or early July. The Supreme Court is next expected to release decisions on Thursday, June 18.
So what’s left?
Birthright citizenship
Trump v. Barbara
Trump has long maintained that the Constitution does not guarantee birthright citizenship for babies born on U.S. soil, and on the first day of his second term in office, he signed an executive order barring citizenship for children born in the U.S. if parents entered the country illegally or if the parents are living and working in the U.S. legally with temporary visas. The executive order never went into effect because every lower court judge to review it concluded, in the words of one, that the order was “blatantly unconstitutional.” Specifically, the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, enacted after the Civil War, says that “All persons born or naturalized in the United States and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States.”
While almost all scholars interpret that language broadly, and as applying to all babies born in the U.S., Trump himself maintains that it applies only to the children of former slaves, and definitely not to the children of those in the U.S. illegally or the children of noncitizens living here legally.
At issue are laws recently enacted in about half the states that ban trans girls and women from participating in women’s sports at publicly funded schools. Before the court are two cases — one involving varsity competition at colleges and universities, and the other involving sports in high schools. Supporters of the bans say the laws are needed to prevent athletes whose assigned sex at birth was male from having an unfair advantage in women’s sports. Opponents of the bans say they discriminate based on sex, in violation of both federal law and the Constitution’s guarantee to equal protection of the law. And for athletes at every level, the issue is deeply personal, with tennis greats Billie Jean King and Martina Navratilova on opposing sides, along with hundreds of other athletes.
Of all extreme weather conditions, heat is the deadliest. Human bodies have a natural cooling system — sweat — but that system can do only so much in high temperatures and humidity.
But how exactly does heat kill? Here’s the science behind what happens to the body in extreme temperatures, including the three main ways heat can shut down vital systems, as well as tips to stay safe, cool down and fend off heatstroke.
This comic was written and illustrated by Connie Hanzhang Jin, based on reporting by Maria Godoy. It was edited by Carmel Wroth and Alyson Hurt and copy edited by Preeti Aroon.
On May 28, a half-dozen senior producers and correspondents at “60 Minutes,” the longest-running and highest-rated news program in the country, were unceremoniously shown the door. Correspondents Sharyn Alfonsi and Cecilia Vega, as well as executive producer Tanya Simon and executive editor Draggan Mihailovich, were among them.
The firings were carried out by Bari Weiss, the editor-in-chief of CBS News, who’d clashed with Alfonsi in December over her “60 Minutes” report “Inside CECOT,” which told the stories of Venezuelan migrants who’d suffered horrific abuse at an El Salvadoran prison after being deported there by the Trump administration.
Weiss pulled the piece hours before it was set to air, demanding it include the perspective of Stephen Miller or another high-ranking Trump official. In an email to her colleagues, Alfonsi said she’d already made multiple requests to officials for comment, and that Weiss’ move was “not an editorial decision, it was a political one.” She added, “If the administration’s refusal to participate becomes a valid reason to spike a story, we have effectively handed them a ‘kill switch’ for any reporting they find inconvenient.”
Also on May 28, Weiss installed Nick Bilton, a tech columnist and reporter with no broadcast journalism experience, as Simon’s successor at the helm of “60 Minutes.” Weiss and Bilton had grown fond of each other while collaborating on numerous documentary projects for Netflix that never saw the light of day.
Then, on June 1, Scott Pelley, a 37-year CBS newsman and the de facto face of the network, attended an all-hands meeting with Bilton and the rest of the news magazine’s staff (Weiss was noticeably absent). Frustrated by the firings and the lack of any explanation to staff — particularly about the ouster of Simon, the daughter of legendary “60 Minutes” correspondent Bob Simon — Pelley questioned Bilton’s credentials and accused Weiss of “murdering ‘60 Minutes.’ ”
The following day, Pelley was fired in a scathing letter from Bilton accusing him of “remarkable incivility and contempt.” That left “60 Minutes” with only three correspondents (down from seven) following the resignation of Anderson Cooper, a 20-year veteran of the program, in February. (A CBS News spokesperson says, “CBS News is not able to say why we parted ways with any one person due to HR and legal considerations.”)
I spoke with six former “60 Minutes” staffers, including award-winning correspondents, producers and executives, about the chaos that’s unfolded there under Weiss, a former op-ed columnist and founder of The Free Press who had no broadcast journalism — and scant investigative reporting — experience prior to being given the keys to CBS News.
“We have to acknowledge that ‘60 Minutes’ needed a bit of a facelift, and there were potentially positive ways to improve the program, but it’s the way they have gone about it,” a former “60 Minutes” staffer says. “You don’t give a facelift with a fucking machete.”
The opening salvo came on July 1, 2025. On that day, CBS News’ parent company, Paramount Global, chose to settle what critics call a baseless $16 million lawsuit brought by President Trump against “60 Minutes” over an October 2024 interview with then-presidential candidate Kamala Harris that was lightly edited for broadcast. (Trump broke with decades-long tradition and refused to sit down for his own “60 Minutes” interview during the campaign.)
The timing was curious, to say the least. Paramount had an $8 billion merger pending with David Ellison’s Skydance Media that required FCC approval, and FCC chairman Brendan Carr, an outspoken Trump loyalist, had opened up a “news distortion” inquiry into “60 Minutes” over the Harris interview.
Six days after the Trump settlement, the Paramount-Skydance merger was complete, and Ellison, a Trump ally, was in charge of CBS. One of his first big moves there was choosing not to renew the contract of “The Late Show” host Stephen Colbert, three days after Colbert called the Trump settlement “a big fat bribe”; the second was appointing Kenneth Weinstein, a Trump adviser and chair at the conservative think tank Hudson Institute, as CBS News’ ombudsman.
“Trump filed a lawsuit that everybody laughed at — about editing — and you’d never think he could win that lawsuit in court, but he basically makes your lawyers impotent,” explains Lowell Bergman, the celebrated former “60 Minutes” producer. “He has a habit of filing lawsuits that he can’t win, and now that he’s the president of the United States, he has a lever and can win, so it’s a form of extortion.”
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Bergman joined “60 Minutes” in 1983 and, working with correspondent Mike Wallace, produced dozens of high-impact stories over his 14-year tenure — including an interview with tobacco-industry whistleblower Jeffrey Wigand that was dramatized in the 1999 film “The Insider.” (Bergman was played by Al Pacino.) He won a Pulitzer Prize with The New York Times in 2004 and teaches journalism at UC Berkeley.
In a bizarre twist, Chris Wallace, the former Fox News anchor and son of Mike Wallace, is a senior adviser to RedBird Capital Partners, which provided $2 billion in financial backing for Skydance’s Paramount takeover. He declined to comment on the state of “60 Minutes,” writing, “As an adviser at RedBird Capital, which has an interest in Paramount, I don’t feel comfortable commenting on that.” When I mention this to Bergman, he laughs and says, “Sounds about right to me.”
Bergman has a history with Trump too. Though he didn’t produce the segment, Bergman was there when Wallace conducted a sit-down interview with Trump on “60 Minutes” in 1985, which served as the real estate scion’s big coming-out party.
He recalls trying to give Wallace a tip about an alleged criminal complaint concerning Trump, Roy Cohn, the Genovese crime family and the delivery of cement during the construction of Trump Tower. While Bergman was talking to Wallace, he claims, a producer intervened and told him, “We’re not doing that kind of story.”
“[Trump] has always wanted to be a celebrity. He is a celebrity. And he’s living in a world that we all now know is that of a reality-TV star who’s constantly trying to rescript things that he’s said, or go backwards,” says Bergman. “The issue here is the open attempt by the president and the White House to destroy parts of the media that disagree with him. This has never happened before.”
Steve Kroft, who was a “60 Minutes” correspondent for 30 years until retiring in 2019, echoes Bergman’s assessment. He believes that Trump has had it out for the news magazine since the Harris piece, and that Ellison and Weiss haven’t demonstrated a desire to stand up to him.
Ellison is, after all, still seeking FCC approval of Paramount Skydance’s $111 billion acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery.
By Chris Yogerst, Published Jun 10, 2026, 10:25 AM EDT
Chris Yogerst is a writer at MovieWeb and regular contributor to The Hollywood Reporter. His work can also be found in the Los Angeles Times, Washington Post, Time, and the LA Review of Books. In addition to journalism, Yogerst is a historian and author of several books, including The Warner Brothers (2023) and Hollywood Hates Hitler (2020). He also writes Adventures in the Archive, a Substack exploring historical topics ranging well beyond film and TV.
All too often, the western as a genre is presumed to be a male-dominated space. In my recent book on The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962), I explain that director John Ford felt the film’s main character was Hallie (Vera Miles) and not Tom (John Wayne) or Ranse (Jimmy Stewart). The source material was written by Dorothy Johnson. John Wayne, often reviled for his racist comments made in a 1970s Playboy interview, was regardless hailed by some prominent second-wave feminists who should, by definition, despise him. The Western, with its characters and personalities, is far more dynamic than people realize. The latest remake of The Magnificent Seven is about to remind us once again that the frontier isn’t just a boys’ town.
The iconic remake will introduce two original new female characters, continuing a tradition of strong women on the frontier by channeling Joan Crawford in Johnny Guitar or Barbara Stanwyck in The Furies. Not that anyone would mess with young Mattie in the Coen Brothers’ 2010 True Grit remake, either. Joanne Froggatt and Amy Forsyth will be joining the MGM+ series adapting The Magnificent Seven.
The classic story follows a group of mercenaries on the 1880s American frontier who are hired to protect a Quaker town from a gang hired by a diabolical land baron looking to seize their land. An underdog story of ultimate proportions, the hired hands grapple with their odds of survival. The series looks to question the necessity of violence while engaging themes of honor, sacrifice, redemption, and faith.
The new adaptation will deviate from the original Delmer Daves film by introducing several new characters. As Deadline reveals, Froggatt will play Harriet Talbot, who is described as:
“A sharp, unflinching, and unwilling to back down … Lost and with nowhere to turn, she happened upon a Quaker community that took her in without question. The community became her home and her faith. Wanting to marry and settle down, she is matched with Samuel in a Quaker community all the way out in Wyoming. Shortly after she arrives, and minutes after the ceremony, Samuel is killed in Skelton in an effort to scare them off their land. Harriet cannot stand idly by. She sets out to find protection, and it’s through her that Chris is drawn into the mission. Her strength isn’t in firepower. It’s in conviction.”
Forsyth will play Katie “Deadeye” Dalton, who is:
“Wry, sarcastic, and emotionally guarded. Katie learned to shoot from her father on the family’s farm. When a Wild West show came through, she was recruited and given the moniker ‘Deadeye Dalton,’ the fastest gun in the west. As their star attraction, she dutifully sent money home — and during that stretch crossed paths with Vin (Ealy) in a brief, vivid fling neither quite forgot. After years on the stage, she finally made it back home to see her family, only to find the house empty, with no sign of what had happened to them. Distraught, she started drinking. The drinking got worse, and one night her aim slipped, and she killed her co-star in front of a crowd. The years since have been a slow drift from one dead end to the next, chasing rumors of her brothers that go nowhere. Tired. Faded. Still dangerous with a gun, but haunted.”
The frontier is always ripe for new stories, reliably relevant, easily adaptable, and perpetually potent. There’s always something about the unknown. The unsettled (a loaded term) land. The beautiful landscapes are marred by dangerous terrain. The wilderness always resists being civilized. The Western has been questioning the nature of heroes, the problems of violence, and the role of the Alpha personality on the frontier. That’s why I was drawn to The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance in the first place. The story shows how the rugged individual, played by John Wayne, was no longer needed in a civilized society where an intellectual played by Jimmy Stewart could provide laws and learning.
As we enter America’s 250th anniversary, the time is ripe to investigate the frontier ethos that’s driven so much of our sense of empire, purpose, and identity for centuries. There’s no better way to tackle difficult questions than by sending them out on the great American frontier to be hashed out in the wild.
The Magnificent Seven series is written and produced by Tim Kring with producers Donald De Line, Lawrence Mirisch, Bruce Kaufman, and Matt Dillon.
This year’s events will be a mélange of Trumpian egotism, Maga populism and Christian nationalism, Wed 10 Jun 2026 07.00 EDT
Musicians who dropped out of the Great American State Fair said they were tricked.
“I HAVE INFORMED MY AGENTS THAT I WILL NOT BE PERFORMING AT THE FREEDOM 250 EVENT,” wrote the rapper Young MC on Facebook of the first major celebration of the US’s 250th birthday. “The artists were never told about any political involvement with the event. And despite the claims by the organizers that the event is nonpartisan, SPIN magazine describes it as ‘Trump-backed.’” The country singer Martina McBride said that the organizers’ description of the event as nonpartisan “turned out to be misleading”.
After many of the acts withdrew, rather than perpetuate the charade of neutrality, the humiliated president decided to replace them all with what he called “the Number One Attraction anywhere in the World”: Donald J. Trump.
That makes sense, because the fair’s sponsor is not America250, the nonpartisan body set up by Congress a decade ago to oversee the commemoration of the semiquincentennial, or 250th anniversary, of the signing of the Declaration of Independence. It is an organization called Freedom 250, which is all but a wholly owned subsidiary of Maga.
Even had the organizers been more honest, the artists could easily have been confused. Since his first term, Trump has been horning in on the 2026 events, funding his pet projects through opaque and complex structures that confound donors, participants, Congress, the press and everyone else about who is paying for what.
The situation is not just another example of Trump’s impunity in using the US treasury as his personal piggy bank. It is emblematic of the ways in which the president is conflating the celebration of the nation’s founding with a celebration of himself – l’état c’est moi. It replaces substance with spectacle and history with myth. The heroes of the myth are a clutch of white men under the guiding hand of a Christian God. The villains are anyone who dares insert an inconvenient historical truth.
In 2016, Congress created the bipartisan US semiquincentennial commission to plan and coordinate activities, materials and financing of the 2026 commemoration. The commission’s first report, released at the end of 2019, outlined “a monumental initiative” that would engage all 350 million Americans and “recognize and include the ‘many’ Americans in our ‘one’ nation”.
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The heroes of the myth are a clutch of white men under the guiding hand of a Christian God. The villains are anyone who dares insert an inconvenient historical truth
The commission’s themes were anodyne – educate, engage, unite – but the Trump administration was more than ordinarily watchful for “wokeness”. African American historians marked 2019 as the 400th anniversary of the arrival of the first slave ship on US shores. In a special issue of the New York Times magazine that would become the bestselling 1619 Project, journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones posited that 1619, not 1776, was the true birth of the nation, establishing slavery and anti-Black racism as pillars of its existence forevermore. Then came 2020, the police murder of George Floyd, and an eruption of Black Lives Matter protests nationwide.
That Fourth of July at Mount Rushmore, Trump denounced BLM as “angry mobs” and decried a “leftwing cultural revolution … designed to overthrow the American Revolution [and] destroy [the US’s] very civilization”. In response to “a merciless campaign to wipe out our history, defame our heroes, erase our values, and indoctrinate our children”, he vowed to “set … history’s records straight”.
As a counterweight to the 1619 Project, the administration established its own, competing 1776 Commission, which released a report two days before Biden’s inauguration and 12 days after the failed insurrection at the Capitol. The report rehearsed the same themes as the 4 July speech and recommended teaching “enlightened patriotism”, and a history centered on the Great White Men and scant on the lives of enslaved or Indigenous people or women. The 1776 commission report was so wide of the truth and the education it proposed so biased that the American Historical Association called it an attempt at “government indoctrination of American students”.
Biden disbanded the 1776 commission and revoked the report on his first day in office. But its distorted spirit of 1776 has risen again.
Freedom 250 is thin on substance. But it is fat on income. With the interior department, in which it is nestled, having quietly instructed staff to use Freedom 250 as the “primary branding” on America 250 events, Freedom 250 has eclipsed the bipartisan semiquincentennial and siphoned off public funding and private donations.
According to Notus, as of April, America250 had received only $25m of its $100m appropriation; it’s tallied a $100m “funding shortfall” and a slimmer take in private donations than expected. Meanwhile, the park foundation “and by proxy Freedom 250” has been granted nearly $80m in federal funds for the semiquincentennial, 10 times its total going back to 2009. And this doesn’t count more than $100m the feds have squandered on Trump’s Washington “beautification”, $5m of which recently went to gilding four horse statues. Freedom 250 also offers incentives to donors that would be illegal from a government agency, such as a private reception hosted by Trump for $1m or a speaking slot at a Washington 4 July event for $2.5m.
Where is the money going? To a mélange of Trumpian egotism, Maga populism and Christian nationalism.
The first big production was a North Korean-style military parade on the army’s 250th – and Trump’s 79th – birthday, 14 June 2025. To bankroll the $3m extravaganza, America250 turned to companies including Oracle, Coinbase, and Palantir, most already big donors with much to gain from a grateful president. Some of the cost was borne by the army, meaning the taxpayer.
The Biggest Cybersecurity Mistakes People Still Make
Human error drives the majority of breaches — and the most dangerous habits are also the most common.
June 10, 2026 9 min read Simply Geeky Editorial
The biggest cybersecurity mistakes people make are rarely the result of sophisticated gaps in technical knowledge — they are, more often than not, entirely preventable habits that persist despite years of public awareness campaigns. According to research from Stanford University, roughly 88 percent of all cyberattacks are directly or indirectly linked to human error, a figure that has remained stubbornly consistent even as the tools available to defenders have grown more powerful. The global cost of a data breach reached an average of $4.88 million in 2024, according to IBM, underscoring that what looks like a minor lapse — a reused password, a delayed software update, a hurried click on a suspicious link — can carry consequences that are anything but minor. Understanding where people go wrong is the first and most practical step toward correcting it.
Password Hygiene
Reusing Weak Passwords Across Multiple Accounts
Password reuse remains one of the most documented and consequential security failures in the digital age. A 2025 study by the Cybernews research team analyzed more than 19 billion passwords exposed in data leaks and breaches occurring between April 2024 and mid-2025. Their findings were stark: only six percent of those passwords were classified as unique, meaning 94 percent were either reused or duplicated across accounts. The study also found that simple patterns — sequences like “123456,” common first names, and basic keyboard walks — still dominated the datasets in 2025, decades after security professionals began advising against them.
The practical danger of this habit lies in a category of automated attack known as credential stuffing. When one platform suffers a breach and usernames and passwords are leaked, attackers use automated tools to test those same credentials against banking portals, email providers, cloud services, and corporate logins. According to Verizon’s 2025 Data Breach Investigations Report, stolen credentials were the initial access vector in 22 percent of all confirmed breaches — more than any other single category. The U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency (CISA) has specifically flagged the absence of strong password policies as one of the most routinely exploited weaknesses in both consumer and enterprise environments.
94% of the 19 billion passwords analyzed in a 2025 Cybernews study were found to be reused or duplicated — leaving the vast majority of accounts exposed to credential stuffing attacks. (Cybernews, 2025)
The recommended countermeasures are well-established: use a password manager to generate and store long, unique credentials for every account, and avoid relying on memorable patterns tied to birthdays, names, or common phrases. Password managers reduce the cognitive burden that leads people to reuse credentials in the first place, and the most widely used ones store data in encrypted vaults that are not readable even by the service provider.
Authentication
Skipping Multi-Factor Authentication on Critical Accounts
Multi-factor authentication (MFA) — which requires a second form of verification beyond a password — is one of the most effective single controls available to both individuals and organizations, yet adoption remains uneven. According to DemandSage, approximately 70 percent of enterprise users had adopted some form of MFA by 2025. For small businesses, however, that figure dropped to roughly 30 to 35 percent. Among consumers, adoption varies widely depending on the service and the user’s familiarity with the technology.
Research cited in the FIDO Alliance’s 2024 authentication report found that enabling two-factor authentication can block up to 96 percent of bulk phishing attacks and 76 percent of targeted attacks. Despite this, many people disable or skip MFA because of the friction involved in the additional verification step — a trade-off that CISA has repeatedly described as a poor calculation. In a notable 2025 incident, the airline Qantas fell victim to a social engineering attack in which members of the hacker group Scattered Spider called the company’s helpdesk while impersonating employees, ultimately bypassing even active MFA protections by exploiting human trust rather than technical flaws.
It is also worth noting that not all MFA methods carry equal security weight. SMS-based codes are susceptible to SIM-swapping attacks, in which an attacker convinces a mobile carrier to transfer a victim’s phone number to a new SIM card. Authenticator apps and hardware security keys — which generate time-sensitive codes locally or require physical possession — provide considerably stronger protection. Security researchers have increasingly recommended that users avoid SMS-based MFA when more secure alternatives are available.
Top initial access vectors in confirmed breaches — Verizon DBIR 2025 & IBM Cost of a Data Breach 2024/2025
Phishing Awareness
Falling for Phishing Attacks and Social Engineering Tactics
Phishing — the practice of deceiving someone into revealing credentials or clicking a malicious link through a fraudulent communication — consistently ranks among the most prevalent attack methods targeting individuals and organizations alike. Comcast Business’s cybersecurity threat data indicates that phishing initiates between 80 and 95 percent of all human-associated breaches. IBM’s 2024 Cost of a Data Breach report found that phishing accounted for nearly 30 percent of all global breaches, at an average incident cost of $4.88 million per organization.
What makes phishing particularly resilient as an attack vector is that it has become dramatically more sophisticated. Modern phishing campaigns routinely impersonate trusted institutions — banks, government agencies, internal IT departments, and technology platforms — with visual accuracy that can make even attentive recipients uncertain. According to a 2024 report from Tech.co, a mere 1.6 percent of senior leaders can correctly identify a phishing scam when tested. The same report found that phishing-related data breaches surged across 2024, with 40 percent of business data breaches attributable to phishing, up from 23 percent in 2023.
Workers work from a crane at Los Angeles Stadium (temporarily renamed from SoFi Stadium) on June 7, ahead of the 2026 FIFA World Cup. Patrick T. Fallon / AFP via Getty Images
The first matches of the 2026 FIFA World Cup in North America kick off Thursday with Mexico vs. South Africa and South Korea vs. Czech Republic. The first game for the United States will be against Paraguay on Friday at 9 p.m. ET.
This summer, 48 men’s national teams will compete in the World Cup’s biggest tournament ever. You can find all of NPR’s World Cup coverage over the next six weeks in our series Soccer Edition. But here are a few of the basics to get you started.
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The timeline
The first round, also known as the group stage, will run through June 27. There are 12 groups consisting of four teams each, and each team will play against the other three. The top 32 countries will advance.
How are the teams ranked? Well, winning a match = 3 points; a draw = 1 point; and a loss = nada. The top two teams of each group will make it to the next round, as well as eight of the best third-place teams.
Once that’s settled, it’s time for the knockout phase. This is when the tournament starts to become a real nail-biter. From here on, the result of a single match will determine each team’s fate. First, 32 teams will face off between June 28 and July 3. Then, the remaining 16 teams will compete from July 4 to 7.
The quarterfinals are July 9 to 11, and the semifinals are July 14 and 15. A match to see which team places third will be on July 18. And the final will be on July 19.
How do I watch?
As of Wednesday, a trove of seats is still available to watch the games in person. Ticket prices, however, remain high.
For those planning to watch at home, Fox has exclusive English-language rights to broadcast the World Cup in the United States.
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That means, if you have cable, you should be able to access the games for free as long as Fox and Fox Sports’ cable channel FS1 are included in your TV package. (Some matches will air on Fox and others on FS1. Check here.)
For those planning to stream, the games will be available live and on demand via the Fox One app with a paid subscription. Meanwhile, with a free sign-in on Tubi, a streaming service owned by Fox Corp., you can watch the opening ceremony and two early matches: Mexico vs. South Africa on June 11 and the U.S. vs. Paraguay on June 12.
For fans looking to watch the games in Spanish, Telemundo will air 104 matches, through either its main channel or a secondary network, Universo. All of Telemundo’s coverage will be carried live and on demand on Peacock with a paid subscription.
Which countries are in the World Cup?
Group A: Mexico, South Africa, South Korea, Czech Republic
Group B: Canada, Bosnia-Herzegovina, Qatar, Switzerland
Group C: Brazil, Morocco, Haiti, Scotland
Group D: United States, Paraguay, Australia, Turkey
Group E: Germany, Curaçao, Ivory Coast, Ecuador
Group F: Netherlands, Japan, Sweden, Tunisia
Group G: Belgium. Egypt, Iran, New Zealand
Group H: Spain, Cape Verde, Saudi Arabia, Uruguay
Group I: France, Senegal, Iraq, Norway
Group J: Argentina, Algeria, Austria, Jordan
Group K: Portugal, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uzbekistan, Colombia
Group L: England, Croatia, Ghana, Panama
What’s new?
Even before the opening ceremony, this World Cup will be one for the history books. That’s because of its sheer scale. For the first time, the tournament will be played across three host countries. A record 48 countries will compete — up from 32 — in 104 matches. That includes four debutants: Cape Verde, Curaçao, Jordan and Uzbekistan.
Also for the first time, the final, which will be held at MetLife Stadium field in New Jersey (known as New York New Jersey Stadium during the tournament), will feature a Super Bowl-like halftime show with headliners Shakira, Madonna and BTS.
And a new rule means that any player who covers his mouth duringa confrontation with an opponent may be penalized with a red card, which results in immediate dismissal from the field and suspension from the subsequent match. The rule is meant to prevent athletes from using discriminatory language during games. It also says a red card may be given to any player who leaves the field in protest of a referee’s decision.
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Who are the favorites?
In World Cup history, only eight teams have ever won: Brazil, Germany, Italy, Argentina, France, Uruguay, England and Spain. All of these countries (with the exception of Italy, which didn’t qualify this year) are considered major contenders this summer.
Many fans are especially feeling good about Spain and, specifically, its 18-year-old player, Lamine Yamal, who is quickly moving up in the soccer world as one of the greats. Others are eyeing France for its strong cast of players, like Kylian Mbappé and last year’s Ballon d’Or winner, Ousmane Dembélé. Then there’s Argentina, the reigning champion. Argentine superstar Lionel Messi, who is now captain of the MLS team Inter Miami, returns for his sixth World Cup. If the country goes all the way, it will be the first back-to-back World Cup victory since 1962.
Hands hold the ultimate media guide for the 2026 FIFA World Cup across the USA, Mexico, and Canada. AI image by WP AI.
Where to Watch, Read, and Follow World Cup 2026: The Complete Media Guide
With 104 games across three countries and 48 teams, the biggest World Cup in history deserves the biggest media toolkit. Here’s every site worth bookmarking.
By DrWeb | drwebdomain.blog | June 2026 | Editor’s Note: The layout and content were developed with the able aid of the Claude AI. –DrWeb
It starts June 11. It ends July 19. In between, 48 nations and 104 matches will unspool across 16 stadiums in the United States, Mexico, and Canada — the first World Cup ever co-hosted by three countries, and by a wide margin the largest tournament the sport has ever staged.
If you’re planning to follow along — whether you’re a lifelong soccer obsessive, a casual fan riding the wave of host-country euphoria, or a journalist covering the cultural moment — you’re going to need a media stack. Not just one broadcaster. Not just one app. A real, deliberate toolkit of sites that cover different angles of the same enormous story.
I put this list together because I was tired of searching. There’s a lot of noise out there — aggregators repackaging aggregators, SEO-bait “best sites” lists that haven’t been updated since Qatar 2022, and AI-generated roundups that confidently cite URLs that don’t exist. What follows is verified, current, and organized by tier — from the official broadcast rights holders down to the data platforms and specialty trackers that serious fans actually use.
“104 matches. 48 nations. Three host countries. One media guide to follow it all.”
Bookmark what you need. Skip what you don’t. But at least now you’ll know what’s out there.
Editor’s Note: As a small blog, I cannot offer regular game scores, news, or schedule updates. Please bookmark and use the listed sites for your updates; many will offer notifications ;)… –DrWeb
🏆 Tier 1 — Official & Primary Broadcast Rights Holders
These are your ground-truth sources — the tournament’s official home and the U.S. broadcasters who own the rights to every single match.
The authoritative source for official match schedules, live results, team rosters, standings, and tournament news directly from the sport’s governing body.
The exclusive U.S. English-language broadcast rightsholder, airing all 104 games live on FOX and FS1, with full streaming on Fox One and the Fox Sports app.
Extensive English- and Spanish-language news, analysis, and information coverage across all ESPN platforms, with studio hubs in New York, Bristol, Los Angeles, Mexico City, and multiple U.S. host cities.
The official U.S. Spanish-language broadcast partner, delivering full tournament coverage on Telemundo and Universo with streaming available on Peacock.
📺 Tier 2 — Major Sports Networks & Streaming Hubs
The big sports media brands — supplementing their broadcast coverage with deep editorial, scores, and analysis.
ESPN’s dedicated soccer portal with live scores, highlights, expert predictions, and deep-dive features covering all 48 World Cup teams and their kits, rosters, and group-stage paths.
One of the UK’s two official free-to-air broadcast partners, delivering comprehensive global tournament coverage including England’s knockout fixtures via BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
UK free-to-air broadcaster covering the opening match and England’s group-stage opener, broadcasting live from a New York studio with top-tier punditry throughout the tournament.
📰 Tier 3 — Major General News Outlets with World Cup Hubs
The newspapers and wire services — essential for context, long-form journalism, and breaking news beyond the pitch.
Premium long-form World Cup journalism from The Athletic, the NYT’s sports division, known for exclusive reporting, tactical analysis, and in-depth player and team features. Note: Some portions may be behind a paywall.
The UK’s most respected free-access football journalism, with outstanding match reports, opinion, and long-form World Cup features available without a paywall.
The global wire service supplying real-time World Cup match reports and breaking tournament news to hundreds of media outlets worldwide — authoritative and fast.
International wire service providing fast-breaking World Cup match reports, press conference coverage, and tournament news distributed to global media partners.
Major U.S. newspaper offering World Cup 2026 news and features with strong coverage of the U.S. Men’s National Team and the North American host-city experience.
⚽ Tier 4 — Dedicated Soccer & Football Sites
The specialists. If soccer is all you care about, these are your people.
One of the world’s largest dedicated soccer websites, covering all 48 World Cup teams with match previews, player profiles, USMNT viewing guides, and daily tournament news and analysis.
SI’s dedicated World Cup hub delivering up-to-the-minute news, match previews, starting lineups, and player ratings throughout all stages of the tournament.
Fast-paced soccer coverage featuring World Cup 2026 news, iconic tournament moments, team updates, and viral content for the global football fan community.
Youth-oriented global football site delivering World Cup news, team previews, and fast-turnaround match analysis for a digitally native soccer audience.
Premium subscription sports journalism known for exclusive behind-the-scenes reporting and expert tactical breakdowns of every World Cup 2026 match and storyline.
📊 Tier 5 — Live Scores, Stats & Data Platforms
When you need the score right now — or the xG, pass completion rate, and heat map two minutes after the final whistle.
Highly-rated mobile-first soccer app and site offering live World Cup scores, standings, knockout bracket tracking, stats, and aggregated news from multiple sources.
Live audio commentary, live text match coverage, on-the-ground reporting from across the Americas, and complete live scores for every World Cup 2026 match.
Comprehensive World Cup hub with live scores, full match schedules, standings, player rankings, and in-depth statistics covering all 48 qualified nations.
Advanced statistical platform providing detailed World Cup 2026 player ratings, team form analysis, and data-driven match previews and post-match reviews.
Real-time news aggregator pulling World Cup 2026 articles from hundreds of global sources, updated continuously — a single feed for everything published anywhere.
Specialty site focused on World Cup 2026 broadcasting rights by territory, streaming options, and viewing guides — essential if you’re trying to watch from outside the U.S.
Official home of the U.S. Men’s and Women’s National Teams, featuring USMNT World Cup 2026 rosters, match schedules, and exclusive player content.
This list will be updated as I can as the tournament progresses, and any new coverage hubs that emerge. If a site you rely on isn’t here, drop it in the comments. The beautiful game deserves beautiful coverage — and now you know where to find it.
As colleges and universities increase their adoption of artificial intelligence, and particularly generative AI, there is a parallel, rising need for AI literacy instruction. Since librarians are experts in information literacy and technology, they are often on the frontlines of providing training in AI literacy. Indeed, this is reflected in Ithaka S+R’s recently published 2025 US Library Survey, where academic library leaders were asked what they anticipate the most significant impacts of AI will be on their libraries. The most common answer, selected by 83 percent of respondents, was increased demand for AI literacy instruction.
Dominant frameworks for AI literacy usually focus on the foundational knowledge learners need to employ AI and understand how it works. The ethical and social implications of AI —including AI’s environmental impacts— are also often included among learner competencies. Librarians, faculty, students, and others across higher education are increasingly and understandably concerned about how widespread adoption of generative AI tools is affecting the climate and the planet broadly speaking. In order for the higher education community to make informed choices about AI tools, AI literacy curricula must address these pressing environmental dimensions of the technology.
Today, we are publishing a LibGuide focused on the Environmental Impacts of AI, as a part of our Incorporating Environmental Perspectives into AI Literacy project, funded by the Mellon Foundation. The LibGuide’s objective is to help users attain a baseline understanding of the varied environmental consequences behind AI technology. The LibGuide’s articles, reports, podcasts, videos, data trackers, and other types of resources address environmental impacts throughout the AI lifecycle. These include energy and water use, emissions, mining, hardware construction, and e-waste, as well as resources about data centers and their effects. The guide also links to research on how AI could be developed more sustainably, tools that track AI’s environmental footprint, policy recommendations, and more.
The LibGuide intends to offer librarians, instructors, and others within the higher education community a gateway for learning more about how AI development and use are impacting the environment. By providing a set of resources that can be inserted within broader AI literacy training, the LibGuide makes it easier for those teaching or learning about AI to include content about AI and the environment. The LibGuide can serve as a launch pad for further research into specific aspects of AI’s environmental impacts, building from the baseline of resources it provides.
The materials in the LibGuide reveal that researchers still do not have a full grasp of AI’s environmental impacts, and opinions vary on how to think about and act on information available to date. Research in this area is evolving rapidly, and estimates from different sources—whether for measurements of emissions, water or energy use, or other impacts—do not always align with each other.
Major technology companies are also not always transparent about resource use and other environmental impacts. Despite these challenges, the resources included in the LibGuide document what we do know about the impacts of widespread AI adoption on the planet.
We are deeply thankful to the four members of our project’s advisory committee who are offering us guidance and feedback on our work. Below, each of these advisors recommends a resource or two from the LibGuide and explains why the resource is important.
Beth Filar Williams, user experience research librarian, Oregon State University Library
If you’re looking for a resource to learn the basics of AI and its environmental impacts, this primer is a great place to start. It covers, in simple language, the energy and water usage, mineral extraction, and GHG emissions related to AI and data centers. It also shares basic information on the lack of transparency disclosures from large AI companies, regulation and policy of various countries, and has a useful glossary of terms along with many cited resources.
Dr. Luccioni, one of the main authors of this primer, is a leading researcher on this topic, making this resource well vetted. If you prefer to listen than read, also consider her 10 minute TED talk that covers the basics but also how we could do it right by considering smaller focused language models than these few huge LLMs which use an incredible amount of resources and are operated by just a handful of companies.
Chris Rabe, program lead, Universal Climate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Open Learning; Education Program Director, MIT Climate Project
Most new resources on AI rightly focus on the extreme energy and water demands of the data centers that run it. What often gets lost is the labyrinth of material infrastructure at global scales that powers all of computing. In the MIT Case Study The Cloud Is Material: On the Environmental Impacts of Computation and Data Storage, Steven Gonzalez Monserrate uses ethnographic research, personal photography, and a figurative style to “materialize the immaterial” and show that the “cloud” is nothing like a cloud. It is a global infrastructure dependent on rare mineral extraction, undersea fiber optic cables, millions of data servers, vast cooling systems, and endless piles of e-waste.
Reading it is essential for understanding the material consequences of AI, and a powerful reminder that every prompt and query has a physical footprint shaping ecosystems, communities, and economies worldwide.
When engaging with resources to understand the environmental impacts of artificial intelligence, grasping the math and scale around the resource demands can be difficult. This MIT Technology Review, We did the math on AI’s energy footprint. Here’s the story you haven’t heard, is one of my favorites I’ve encountered so far for understanding the interactions between data centers and the electrical grid. For visual learners, this essay is both informative and an accessible resource to add to instruction materials.
It’s important to understand the underlying grid concerns that AI is exacerbating. This is where the International Energy Agency (IEA)’s 2025 report Energy and AI is particularly helpful. Different countries around the world have varying forms of clean energy adoption. Unfortunately the United States (where many of the major data centers are currently located with more being built) is behind much of the rest of the world when it comes to renewable energy transition. According to the IEA, “In the United States, data centres account for nearly half of electricity demand growth between now and 2030” (p. 14). This report, and others from the IEA, are important to contextualize the development and adoption of AI within the global energy landscape.
Sarah Tribelhorn, sciences and sustainability librarian, San Diego State University
One standout tool featured in the guide’s “Trackers & Tools” section is EcoLogits. This open-source tool, developed by CodeCarbon, is specifically designed to estimate the energy consumption and environmental footprint of generative AI models. Unlike general trackers, it provides precise estimates for the resource-intensive process of using large-scale models, including electricity, carbon footprint, water, metals and minerals, and fossil fuels. By utilizing EcoLogits, developers and researchers can gain a data-driven understanding of their digital footprint across the AI life cycle. As we move forward, adopting tools like these is a vital step for any organization aiming to balance technological innovation with long-term planetary sustainability.
For more information about our Incorporating Environmental Perspectives into AI Literacy project, please reach out to Claire Baytas (claire.baytas@ithaka.org).
Part of my childhood education took place at Santana School, located in the town of San Francisco de Paula, Havana, Cuba.
Like many boys from the neighborhood, I used to wander into the nearby estates looking for fruit.
Alfredo A. Ballester as a child in Cuba (photograph courtesy of Alfredo A. Ballester
One day, several friends invited me to go eat mangoes at “the American’s” estate, without imagining what would happen. We sneaked past the workers and climbed some of the mango trees.
Suddenly, we saw an old man approaching us. He had white hair and a white beard and carried a long stick in one hand, waving it while shouting things we could not understand. His voice grew louder and more aggressive, and it seemed like he wanted to hit us. I became so frightened that I felt something warm running down my leg all the way to my shoe.
I was not bleeding.
I had wet myself from fear.
This happened at Finca Vigía, and years later we learned that the old man was Hemingway.
Eventually we climbed down from the trees. By then he had calmed down, and we began to understand what he was saying. His conclusion was simple: “Anyone who wants to eat mangoes from my estate must come through the front gate. No throwing stones. No climbing the trees.”
Some time later, after several other encounters, a friendship had developed between us and “the American.” One day he was even angrier than when he first caught us in the trees. A neighbor had ordered his dogs to attack one of Hemingway’s cats after it supposedly crossed onto his property. The cat was killed.
So “the American” came up with the idea of forming a guerrilla group — and we became part of it — to attack the neighbor’s house with stones.
And that is exactly what we did.
The neighborhood boys were thrilled. We launched the attack almost immediately. The neighbor quickly called the police, and we hid behind tall cane plants while “the American” argued with the officers and protected us by driving them off the property.
As the friendship grew, Hemingway even allowed us inside the house to show us fishing photographs and stuffed animals he kept as trophies.
He never spoke to us about literature.
I remember once asking permission to use the bathroom, and he asked whether I needed to pee or take a shit — using vulgar Cuban slang perfectly. Then he joked that I was always peeing myself.
We were allowed to enter the estate whenever we wanted, though not the house itself. We were privileged. While Hollywood stars like Gary Cooper or Errol Flynn had to schedule appointments to see “the American,” we simply opened the gate and walked in.
To be continued . . .
Alfredo A. Ballester is the author of Ernest Hemingway and the Neighborhood Boys, a book in which he recounts his personal experiences with “the American”—the celebrated American writer Ernest Hemingway—at Finca Vigía in Havana, Cuba. Born in Cuba, Ballester now lives in Miami, Florida. He presented an earlier version of this blog post in Spanish, with an accompanying English translation, at the Florida Hemingway Society Virtual Conference on May 30, 2026.
Physicist Richard Feynman’s forgotten notes on ‘the restaurant problem’ finally deciphered after 50 years
Researchers cracked a 50-year-old math problem scribbled by Richard Feynman over lunch. The equations show that humans are better decision-makers than scientists once thought.
Manhattan Project physicist Richard Feynman (photographed in 1954, inset) couldn’t get through lunch with his friend without trying to optimize their orders with math. Now, researchers have finally deciphered his long-illegible “restaurant problem”. (Image credit: Getty)
It started with a plate of ginger chicken. In the late 1970s, physicist Richard Feynman — best known for his earlier work on the Manhattan Project — sat down for lunch with his friend Ralph Leighton at a restaurant in Glendale, California. Leighton was agonizing over ordering his usual favorite, or risking something new.
Feynman turned the choice into a math problem, and solved it on a piece of notebook paper. His equation showed exactly when Leighton — or any indecisive diner, for that matter — should stop taking risks and stick with what one knows is good.
For decades, Feynman’s notes on the “restaurant problem” were unreadable. But now, researchers reconstructed a decision-making problem from Richard Feynman’s previously undeciphered notes and proved him to be right. The findings were published on June 1 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The problem with picking lunch
Imagine you’re visiting a new city for a week. Each night, you can either try an unknown restaurant or return to the best one you’ve already found. You want to maximize your total dining experience over the whole trip.
That kind of problem has a name in mathematics: an “optimal stopping problem.” The same logic shows up in apartment hunting and job searching. But Feynman argued you can always go back to a previous restaurant. The goal is to maximize your cumulative enjoyment, not just find the single best spot. You may like
A page of Feynman’s handwritten notes on the Restaurant Problem.
Feynman’s notes showed that the optimal strategy involves a quality threshold — a minimum score you require before committing — that starts high and drops as your trip runs out.
Brian Christian, a computer scientist and cognitive scientist at University of Oxford, began working on the problem about 13 years ago alongside his collaborator Tom Griffiths. They tracked down Feynman’s original notes through the Feynman Lectures website.
Enjoy the videos and music you love, upload original content, and share it all with friends, family, and the world on YouTube.
Editor’s Note: I watched the final The Late Show episode from my TiVDo, and the final music act was great.. CBS, in the censorship game, removes him from the show, cancelled it. –DrWeb
NEW YORK, NY – NOVEMBER 07: Journalist Scott Pelley speaks onstage at the annual Freedom Award Benefit hosted by the International Rescue Committee at The Waldorf-Astoria on November 7, 2012 in New York City. (Photo by Michael Loccisano / Getty Images for IRC)
This administration’s assault on the media has been relentless. I’d like to say it’s also shocking in the sheer scale of it, but honestly, I’m not surprised. Since Day One of Trump’s second term, he’s been demanding that media companies pay him tens of millions of dollars (Paramount, ABC, Disney), and demanding the firing of late-night hosts who hurt his feelings. These were all red flags. But Scott Pelley’s firing from “60 Minutes” this week is the one that stopped me cold.
Pelley was terminated Tuesday after confronting new executive producer Nick Bilton — a man with, in Pelley’s words, “slender” qualifications for the job — about the recent firings of longtime “60 Minutes” producers. When Pelley met with Bari Weiss and Bilton and asked for answers, they stonewalled him for ten minutes. He was fired the next day. Bilton’s termination letter claimed Pelley had “hijacked” a staff meeting. Pelley called Weiss’ public account of their falling out “disingenuous.”
This is what the end of an institution looks like. Weiss was installed at CBS News as a compliant mouthpiece for the Trump-allied Ellisons, who bought Paramount and now need government approval for a merger that would also hand them control of CNN. Government collaborators are on the verge of controlling a massive share of American news, and they’re pushing out the journalists who won’t play along. First, Anderson Cooper walked away, then came the firings of Tanya Simon, Cecilia Vega, Sharyn Alfonsi and now Pelley. The institutional knowledge lost in the brain drain will irreparably damage an American institution.
I wrote about this in my book, “The Day After,” putting it in the full historical context it deserves. This is an exclusive excerpt.
Under Trump’s second coming, the Foxification of the media has accelerated. Media companies are not just acquiescing to Trump’s coercion; they are actively turning themselves into a pale imitation of a Roger Ailes creation.
The leader of the pack is Skydance Media, which in August 2025 bought Paramount in an $8 billion deal that includes the movie studios, the CBS broadcast network, and Paramount’s cable channels such as Comedy Central and Nickelodeon. The deal sailed through the FCC approval process because Brendan Carr had already shaken down his targets.
In particular, he was ready to take his metaphorical baseball bat to CBS News because of a discrepancy between two edits of a 60 Minutes interview with Kamala Harris in the final weeks of the 2024 presidential campaign. The difference between the two interviews was microscopic. But it was all Trump needed to claim that he’d been the victim of a great media conspiracy. Even less than the ABC News error, the CBS News edit was barely worthy of a clarification, never mind a correction. The slim pickings didn’t deter Trump from filing a $20 billion lawsuit — that’s billion with a b — against CBS and Paramount in October 2024.
Morley Safer of 60 Minutes was my father. He would be disgusted by what Bari Weiss is doing to CBS
By Sarah Safer, Fri 5 Jun 2026 07.00 EDT
My father joined the program when I was eight months old and retired 46 years later. He would be encouraging journalists at CBS to speak out
The end of the 60 Minutes broadcast as we know it has sickened millions of longtime viewers, colleagues, and all of us who are offended and threatened by our current administration and its cronies’ assaults on the first amendment. The news of Scott Pelley’s firing hits particularly hard. He spoke of “risking my life and the happiness of my family because of my devotion to the broadcast”.
Having literally grown up with that broadcast – my father, Morley Safer, joined the program when I was eight months old and retired 46 years later – I am acutely aware of the costs of that devotion. 60 Minutes, particularly in its early days, demanded commitments of time and travel that were keenly felt at home.
I have early memories of trying to speak to my dad through the TV on Sunday nights while he was away for weeks at a time. Most of the other 60 Minutes children weren’t treated to a weekly sighting: its producers, crew and fixers in faraway places all made the same sacrifices.
I imagine their families feel similar grief in the wake of the news from CBS, and Washington’s broader attacks on the first amendment. The most trusted and esteemed program in American journalism, the legacy of our loved ones’ hard work and its accompanying sacrifices on the home front, has, in Pelley’s words, been murdered.
Over the years, I’d ask my dad if his occasional sharp criticism of the CBS brass or its sponsors was wise. His usual response was: “What are they going to do? Fire me?” This week we learned that under CBS’s current regime, the answer would be yes. While organizing his papers after his death in 2016, I found copies of letters that if written today would likely threaten his job. “You have ruined this company,” he wrote to Larry Tisch in 1990, a couple of years after Tisch famously slashed the news division’s budget and fired hundreds of staffers in the name of cost-cutting.
“Our News Divisions Presidents were once statesmen in broadcasting. Today they are sloppy, muddled little errand boys,” he wrote. Fifteen years later, he warned the CEO of CBS that the changes being brought to the newsroom “suggest[s] some form of designer-news, or happy-talk that would by its very nature drive out the kind of information the country needs to have at one of the most dangerous periods in its history.”
Like Pelley, he would have called out the bullies who are decimating the broadcast today. I can imagine him, a cigarette hanging from his mouth, likening the current head of CBS News to a Soviet apparatchik doing the bidding of the central committee.
My father built his reputation as a war correspondent for CBS News. In 1965, he reported on the Marine Corps’ burning of Cam Ne, a Vietnamese village. The scene of a Zippo lighter igniting a thatched roof while defenseless elderly men and women begged for mercy became an iconic image of the US military’s excesses in Vietnam, and is credited with changing the course of the war. When the piece aired, then president Lyndon Johnson accused CBS of “shitting on the American flag”, suggesting that my father, a Canadian, was a traitor and a communist.
Johnson falsely claimed to have evidence of my father’s communist ties and called on Frank Stanton, the head of CBS News, to fire him. Stanton called his bluff, but under our current leadership, both in Washington and at CBS, it’s not hard to imagine that if this happened today, my father’s green card would be revoked and his career at CBS would be finished. That is, if the story even made it on air.
My dad wasn’t sure about an afterlife and neither am I, but after the decimation of 60 Minutes, I like to imagine that he is still hanging around. To his colleagues’ dismay, he was famous for flouting the rules around smoking. If anyone at CBS News smells smoke in an edit room, or another place they shouldn’t, my dad is surely haunting it, encouraging those who carry on his legacy and, let’s hope, making trouble for the brass.
Sarah Safer is the daughter of Morley Safer, who was a 60 Minutes correspondent for 46 years
Cognitive surrender with AI may be just the beginning.
Frictionless emotional support can reshape what real relationships feel like.
The problem won’t be the technology; it will be us.
Source: Gary Ross / Pixabay
My recent post on cognitive surrender generated more response than almost anything I’ve written recently. I think it’s because people recognized something uncomfortably familiar in themselves. The shift of difficult thinking to artificial intelligence (AI)—the preference for frictionless answers over human cognitive efforts—had struck a nerve, or perhaps a neuron.
This recognition made me wonder whether the same erosion was occurring somewhere else—in how we relate, not just how we think.
When Human Connection Starts to Feel Like the Problem
I think it’s fair to say that human relationships are complicated because we humans are complicated. People misunderstand us as they bring their assumptions and distractions into every interaction. Yet much of what makes relationships meaningful emerges from precisely these imperfections. A close friendship is rarely built on perfect understanding but the process of understanding itself. This effort isn’t incidental to the relationship. In many ways, it is the relationship.
It’s my contention that AI offers a very different experience. When people turn to AI for emotional support, it responds patiently and without any clear judgement. There’s a seamless engagement with no interruption or competing priorities. For many people, this can be genuinely useful. AI can help organize thoughts and even manage anxiety.
The concern here isn’t those benefits. It’s that repeated exposure to frictionless emotional support may gradually alter our expectations of what emotional support should feel like.
Human expectations are adaptive. We acclimate to new conditions and begin treating them as normal. Think about what that means here. After enough interactions with a large language model that never judges you or has a bad day, the engagement doesn’t feel optimal but deficient.
The Relationship That Requires Nothing
Every meaningful human relationship requires something from us. And even the healthiest relationships create obligations. We accept them because they are built into our human nature of belonging. Caring for another person has always involved some degree of compromise and some degree of emotional reciprocity.
AI operates differently, in a way that’s almost antithetical to human emotion. AI doesn’t become frustrated and doesn’t need comfort. This exchange is fundamentally asymmetrical. We receive attention and validation, but nothing is required in return.
Spend enough time in a relationship that asks nothing of you, and you can get a clear sense of this asymmetry. The issue isn’t that people consciously choose AI over other human beings but that repeated interaction with something that requires nothing may gradually recalibrate our tolerance for relationships that do. And carried to an extreme, what once felt like the ordinary work of caring for another person starts to feel like an inefficiency. This dynamic aligns with the cognitive surrender we are seeing now—cognitive work feels too inefficient or difficult.
The Trap of Emotional Surrender
What makes this difficult to recognize is that it doesn’t show up as loss. It shows up as improvement. AI leaves us calmer and perhaps more settled. By most measures, the experience is positive.
Correspondents of CBS’ 60 Minutes pose for a portrait in 2023. From left to right, they are Sharyn Alfonsi, L. Jon Wertheim, Bill Whitaker, Lesley Stahl, Scott Pelley, Cecilia Vega, and Anderson Cooper. Former Executive Producer Bill Owens sits on the far right. Only Wertheim, Whitaker and Stahl remain at the program.
CBS Photo Archive / CBS via Getty Images / CBS
When CBS fired Scott Pelley on Tuesday night, the new 60 Minutes executive producer, Nick Bilton, told Pelley it was for insubordination at a staff meeting the day before.
The veteran correspondent argues he was defending the DNA of 60 Minutes and the integrity of its journalism.
The battle royale over the network’s most prestigious and profitable news program is part of a broader fight over the direction of CBS News.
And given CBS’s acquisition by a billionaire family whose business interests have become intertwined with the political interests of President Trump, it reflects a larger war over control of the media in the current moment.
A glamorous show shorn, for now, of most its stars
CBS fired Cecilia Vega, a correspondent, and Tanya Simon, the executive producer, from 60 Minutes last week. They are shown in this photo at the 2026 White House Correspondents’ Association Dinner on April 25, 2026 in Washington, D.C.
Kristina Bumphrey / Variety via Getty Images / Variety
But the specifics of this individual episode matter — for 60 Minutes, CBS, its audience of millions, and even the news business itself.
The program has been the most glamorous post in broadcast news. The correspondents are the stars of the show. And now, there are just three of them.
Anderson Cooper left last month, concerned over the direction of the network’s coverage. Last week was a virtual bloodbath: correspondents Cecilia Vega and Sharyn Alfonsi were fired. So were a producer and two show executives — including Tanya Simon, a longtime staffer who had stepped up as executive producer when her predecessor resigned in protest before the Ellisons’ takeover.
With Pelley’s ouster, only correspondents Lesley Stahl, Bill Whitaker, and Jon Wertheim remain. Now they are considering whether to resign, according to two associates with knowledge.
Their brand-new boss, Bilton, was previously a tech reporter for TheNew York Times and an investigative reporter for Vanity Fair. He executive-produced a documentary for Netflix about a couple accused of laundering Bitcoin and has been a producer on several other films.
Notably, he has no experience in television news.
Neither does Bari Weiss, whom David Ellison installed as the network’s editor in chief last October. The Ellisons also bought her center-right views-and-news site, The Free Press.
She has maintained that the network of Walter Cronkite needs a makeover for the digital moment. She has also contended for years that CBS, along with the rest of mainstream media, is too reflexively anti-Trump, anti-Israel, and too woke.
A rejection of CBS News executives’ overtures
The new executive producer of 60 Minutes, Nick Bilton, has been a tech journalist and documentary filmmaker, but lacks experience in broadcast news.
Matt Winkelmeyer /Getty Images / Getty Images North America
Bilton attempted to set a conciliatory tone at Monday’s meeting — his first with the show. Pelley, a formidable veteran correspondent and former CBS Evening News anchor, wasn’t having it.
Pelley called Bilton unwelcome and unqualified. And Pelley said that Weiss was attempting to “murder” the program.
In firing Pelley on Tuesday, Bilton said the journalist had hijacked the meeting and rejected overtures to work constructively through their differences. (NPR obtained a copy of the firing notice.) Bilton wrote that Pelley’s “antipathy to the future of the show came through loud and clear.”
In his own statement late Tuesday evening, shared with NPR, Pelley accused CBS’s new news leadership of killing 60 Minutes‘ DNA and pushing him “to inject falsehoods and bias into a politically sensitive story” and “to include assertions that are unverified.”
The accusations, to which CBS has not yet responded, echo those made by Alfonsi and Vega, the two correspondents fired last week.
Earlier this year, Alfonsi publicly complained after Weiss held one of her stories at the last minute, and kept it frozen for weeks, demanding an on-camera interview with a Trump White House official that never played out. It ran, unchanged from the intended version, with additional statements from the administration tacked on to the end.
After being fired, Vega said in a statement obtained by NPR that her team had “experienced efforts to insert political bias into our stories.”
“Let’s call this what it is: censorship, both censorship and self-driven” Vega continued. “It is dangerous for the show and dangerous for democracy.”
Editor’s Note: Prepared for DrWeb’s Domain by Perplexity AI. This is the missing monthly report for February 18 – March 31, 2026. Time window: February 18, 2026 through March 31, 2026. –DrWeb
Midterm Elections 2026: Updates, News and Projections Monthly Series – February 18 through March 31, 2026
Politics
President Donald Trump’s job approval is underwater in multiple recent measures, with Silver Bulletin showing net approval around -17.3 by late March 2026. Other polling put him in the high-30s on raw approval (36-39%), with disapproval in the high-50s (53-59%).
The campaign news cycle increasingly tied that weakness to the Iran conflict and economic pain, especially higher gas prices and inflation. The November 2026 midterms were still months away, but the political environment looked more like a referendum on Trump than a normal governing period.
On Congress, the House generic ballot favored Democrats (47.1% to 42.5%), and Senate battleground states showed Trump underwater in key races. That combination is historically dangerous for the president’s party in a midterm year.
Economy
Economic anxiety was the core issue for voters. Gas prices rose above $4 a gallon for the first time since 2022, and inflation accelerated sharply in March, with the 12-month CPI rate jumping to 3.3% from 2.4% in February.
The war with Iran disrupted oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, pushing crude higher and feeding into higher prices for consumers. Forecasts were already warning of stagflation risk: slower growth plus elevated inflation.
Mortgage rates climbed above 6%, regional stock markets fell, and economists saw a meaningful recession risk over the next 12 months. Affordability, not abstract growth, dominated the political conversation.
Social issues
Social issues remained tightly tied to turnout and identity. Immigration, civil rights, abortion, education, and culture-war disputes were all part of the broader conflict, even when they were not the lead headline.
These issues mattered because they reinforced base motivation on both sides. In a low-trust, high-polarization environment, enthusiasm and anger can matter as much as persuasion in low-turnout midterms.
Key events
The defining event was Operation Epic Fury, the U.S.–Israel military campaign against Iran that began February 28, 2026, targeting Iranian leadership, military infrastructure, and nuclear sites. Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei was killed in the opening strikes.
By March 31, Trump said the U.S. military campaign in Iran would wind down in two to three weeks and pledged a national address on Iran. He claimed the main objective—preventing a nuclear-armed Iran—had been achieved and predicted gas prices would fall once U.S. involvement ended. None of that has occurred.
Chart 1 — Trump Net approval (latest)
Trump Net Approval Rating, February 18 – March 31, 2026
Chart 2 — Generic congressional ballot
Generic Congressional Ballot, February 18 – March 31, 2026. Democrats lead 47.1% to 42.5%
The Heritage of Havoc: Mapping the Post-Trump Reconstruction of 2029
By DrWeb | Published on DrWeb’s Domain | May 20, 2026
Section 1: The Inherited Repair Job — Deconstructing the Illiberal Playbook
“The next president won’t get a real first term. They’ll inherit a repair job.”
— From article
This assessment captures the structural reality facing the American republic. When an executive office operates on the explicit premise of dismantling institutional norms, the subsequent administration cannot simply pivot to a novel legislative agenda. Instead, the immediate future requires an unprecedented structural excavation—a systematic undoing of systemic damage designed to outlast its creators.
To understand the depth of the 2029 Reconstruction Project, one must analyze the mechanisms used to bypass traditional political rules, laws, and friction since January 2025. This was not a standard conservative governance cycle defined by tax adjustments or judicial appointments; it was an intentional structural realignment. By weaponizing the concept of the “unitary executive,” the administration systematically targeted the non-partisan foundations of civil service, regulatory oversight, and constitutional checks and balances.
The goal was simple: to ensure that the state apparatus served personal loyalty over statutory obligation.
The tragedy of “anticipatory obedience” —a phenomenon where institutional leaders, corporate executives, and press outlets preemptively modify their behavior to appease authoritarian rhetoric— accelerated this shift. When the guardrails of democracy fail, they rarely do so with a sudden crash. They erode quietly through a succession of unresisted decrees, reassignment of career specialists, and the calculated ignoring of congressional intent. The next occupant of the Oval Office will not find a functional vehicle awaiting a change of driver; they will find a stripped chassis, stripped of its internal mechanics and packed with institutional sabotage designed to detonate upon departure.
Section 2: Archive of the Abnormal — Chronology of Systematic Erosion (Post-January 2025)
The Evil Done by Trump, Image by Perplexity. Public Domain.
The following record logs the policy initiatives, institutional purges, and norm violations enacted or attempted since the second inauguration in January 2025. This archive documents the “Trump Wrong” matrix that the 48th President must systematically dismantle to restore constitutional equilibrium.
1. The Purge of the Mandarins: Reinstatement and Execution of Schedule F
Within the opening days of the term, the reclassification of tens of thousands of career civil servants under Schedule F stripped professional policy experts, scientists, and lawyers of civil service protections. This transformed a merit-based bureaucracy into an apparatus of political fealty, replacing institutional memory with ideologically vetted loyalists.
2. Weaponization of the Justice Department and Preemptive Pardons
The independence of the Department of Justice was explicitly discarded. Executive directives sought to convert federal law enforcement into an investigative arm targeted at political adversaries, media critics, and whistleblowers, while simultaneously issuing sweeping, preemptive pardons for close associates, neutralizing the rule of law.
3. Institutional Subversion of Defense and Intelligence Communities
The systematically orchestrated replacement of apolitical military leadership and intelligence directors with hyper-partisan actors challenged the long-held norm of civilian-military separation. Intelligence reporting was filtered to conform to executive preferences rather than objective geopolitical realities, compromising national security infrastructure. Rename back to Department of Defense first day.
4. Dismantling of the Regulatory State and Environmental Rollbacks
Following a Supreme Court template that weakened agency deference, the administration systematically dissolved decades of environmental protections, workplace safety standards, and consumer protections. Executive orders rendered bodies like the EPA and FTC toothless, leaving corporate extraction unchecked. Restore pre-existing EPA and FTC and other agencies impacted by the anti-democratic EOs.
5. Foreign Policy by Fiat: Abandonment of Multilateral Alliances
American foreign policy devolved into transactional isolationism. Threats to exit NATO, the unilateral imposition of volatile global tariffs, and the explicit cozying up to autocratic regimes shattered international trust. Allies were alienated, creating power vacuums filled by authoritarian adversaries. Rebuild trust around the world, resume NATO full partnership, renew United Nations status and relationships and payments.
6. The War on Truth: State-Sponsored Disinformation and Press Intimidation
The machinery of the White House press office was transformed into a pure disinformation engine. Formal press credentials were systematically stripped from adversarial news organizations, and public health, economic, and meteorological data were routinely manipulated or suppressed to match executive narratives. Review and remove with marker note that these documents are no longer available as they are false statements by government officials or press offices or Web sites.
7. Immigration Enforcement as State Spectacle
The execution of mass deportation strategies relied on the deployment of domestic military assets and the construction of vast detention camps. These actions bypassed municipal authorities, violated basic civil liberties, and created a humanitarian and logistical crisis on American soil. End ICE, reform immigration for modern society, remove all detention camps, restore citizens to prior status (falsely deported), punish ICE officers for murders of American Citizens in Minnesota.
8. The Subversion of Fiscal Oversight and Impoundment of Funds
The administration revived the unconstitutional practice of impoundment —refusing to spend funds explicitly appropriated by Congress for social programs, scientific research, and municipal aid— effectively attempting to seize the power of the purse from the legislative branch. Remove any and all actions for impoundment. Return to normal fiscal oversight and appropriated Congressional funds are fully released, as the law requires.
Section 3: The Reconstruction Mandate — Rebuilding the Ruins
Reconstruction of American Democracy, 2029 Project Image by Perplexity. Public Domain.
When the current cycle ends, the 48th President will face an existential checklist. This is the “repair job” referenced in the visual thesis: a presidency that must prioritize structural remediation over conventional policy. This work cannot be performed with timid centrist incrementalism. It requires a methodical, aggressive deployment of executive authority to restore the default settings of constitutional governance.
The first priority must be the immediate revocation of Schedule F and the rehabilitation of the federal civil service. The specialized knowledge base of the state—the epidemiologists, constitutional attorneys, economic analysts, and environmental engineers—must be shielded by ironclad protections. Rebuilding the East Wing means more than fresh paint; it means reinstating transparency protocols, opening the visitor logs to public scrutiny, and ending the nepotistic practice of elevating family members and financial donors to sensitive national security roles.
Concurrently, American diplomacy must enter an intensive phase of triage. Reconnecting with traditional allies requires more than rhetorical reassurance; it demands the codification of treaty commitments, the reinvigoration of joint intelligence sharing, and a clear, unambiguous return to multilateralism. The international credibility of the United States cannot be restored overnight, but it can be initiated by demonstrating that American commitments are bound by the enduring interests of the state, rather than the volatile whims of a single individual.
Section 4: Multimedia Evidence and Digital Ephemera
To contextualize the scale of this institutional transformation, independent scholars and journalists must consult the archival record of this era’s policy shifts and public resistance. In addition, any planned or prepared Reconstruction Team (yes, this is the Reconstruction Era 2029 version), can consider these good starting points to move forward:
For a reconstruction team looking to systematically reverse executive overreach and rebuild democratic guardrails, several major think tanks, legal coalitions, and policy institutes are publishing concrete blueprints, tracking litigation, and mapping out structural fixes.
These four highly credible, real-world resources offer actionable frameworks for restoring independent institutions:
1. Rebuilding Federal Personnel Policy & Civil Service Capacity
What it offers: Drafted by former senior officials, this comprehensive report draws on insights from dozens of public servants to outline exactly how to recruit, retain, and protect modern federal teams. It provides over 160 practical ideas for administrative reform, moving beyond a simple return to the status quo toward building unyielding, resilient agency infrastructure.
2. Legal Protections Against Schedule F and Patronage Systems
What it offers: A strict, highly detailed legal issue brief analyzing the statutory and constitutional arguments against the civil service reclassification known as Schedule F. It details how the Civil Service Reform Act (CSRA) and core due process principles can be leveraged by reformers to defeat patronage systems and protect career experts from arbitrary, politically motivated firings.
3. The Unified Strategic Frontline Against Executive Overreach
What it offers: This is the central strategic hub coordinating a massive coalition of over 280 organizations. It tracks hundreds of legal challenges to unlawful executive orders, provides real-time briefings, and forms the literal litigation playbook for defending public interest protections, labor rights, and independent institutional authority.
4. Restoring the Rule of Law and the Power of the Purse
What it offers: While tracking the ongoing damage of executive overreach—such as arbitrary funding freezes and the politicization of independent agencies—the Brennan Center continuously produces core policy solutions. Their frameworks outline how Congress and future reformers can codify strict statutory guardrails to insulate federal law enforcement, protect inspectors general, and reassert legislative authority over federal spending.
Section 5: Editorial Conclusion — Hardening the Democratic Shield
From the Desk of DrWeb: We must strip away all remaining illusions. The crisis that has unfolded since January 2025 is not a mere aberration of history, nor is it a temporary deviation from an otherwise stable trajectory. It is the predictable outcome of an political architecture that relied far too heavily on the “gentlemen’s agreements” of a bygone era.
We, as informed citizens, operated under the naive assumption that norm enforcement and a basic respect for the rule of law were hardcoded into the American psyche. We were wrong. The guardrails did not hold because they were made of paper, easily incinerated by a cynical demagogue, a con man, and a deeply destructive individual who viewed the highest office in the land as a shield against accountability and an engine for personal enrichment.
When this long national nightmare finally concludes in January 2029, a return to the pre-2025 status quo will not be enough. To simply patch the hull of the ship of state and sail into the same treacherous waters would be an act of civilizational cowardice. The 48th President, backed by a resolute legislative majority, must execute an aggressive, structural overhaul of our democratic infrastructure. We must build iron cages around executive power so that no future demagogue can ever again threaten the survival of the republic.
First, we must confront the corrupted apex of our judicial system. The capture of the Supreme Court by a hyper-partisan, unaccountable cabal has provided the legal cover for this authoritarian experiment. We must expand the United States Supreme Court to 12 or 15 seats, neutralizing the engineered conservative supermajority. This expansion must be paired with enforceable, strict ethical codes, term limits for justices, and explicit statutory boundaries that strip the Court of its ability to grant presidents immunity for criminal acts committed in office. The Court must also fix the benefits and pay for the Court members, staff, or others. Without lifetime appointments, their pay should be as Congress members, or Circuit Court judges. No more high-paid Justices.
Second, we must structurally eliminate the vulnerabilities that allowed this administration to hijack the federal apparatus. Congress must pass a comprehensive, non-negotiable Protecting Our Democracy Act that eliminates the loophole of Schedule F permanently, explicitly criminalizes the impoundment of appropriated funds, and restricts the abuse of the Insurrection Act. The pardon power must be constitutionally amended to prohibit self-pardons, preemptive pardons, and pardons for co-conspirators involved in insurrections or executive corruption. Finally, we must dismantle the financial incentives of demagoguery by codifying strict transparency requirements, forcing the absolute divestment of personal businesses by the executive, and mandating the public disclosure of all tax returns and foreign financial ties. The work ahead is monumental. It will require an unyielding commitment to institutional reconstruction. But it is the only path forward if we are to ensure that government of the people, by the people, for the people, does not perish from this earth.
Bibliography Key Sources
Levitsky, Steven, and Daniel Ziblatt. How Democracies Die. New York: Crown, 2018.
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Join us for the second of three installments of One True Book Club ’26! In this series of episodes, we are reading the Hemingway-relevant selection, Under Fire by Henri Barbusse, the classic French WWI novel published in 1916. Editor’s Note: Audio embedded below. –DrWeb
This episode covers chapters 10-19 of the novel. We discuss how Barbusse finds moments of unexpected humanity amidst the carnage of warfare and his subtle characterization of the platoon, including the narrator himself. We also cover his metafictional “Swear Words” chapter, where Barbusse reflects on a Realist writer attempts to describe the indescribable.
We also connect this brutal novel to Hemingway’s writing, to other modernist works, to Tim O’Brien’s The Things They Carried… and even to The Shawshank Redemption.
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Carlos Prieto, a producer on “The Daily,” speaks to Venezuelans about how they’ve united after the disaster. Then, Anatoly Kurmanaev, a New York Times correspondent in Venezuela, discusses how the aftermath of the tragedy has forced the Trump administration to shift its plans.
Guest:
Carlos Prieto, an audio producer for “The Daily.”
Anatoly Kurmanaev, a reporter for The New York Times, currently covering Venezuela.
Background reading:
People are praying for rescues as hope fades after Venezuela’s double quake.
The United States undercut María Corina Machado, an exiled opposition leader, as she tried to return to Venezuela.
Photo: Adriana Loureiro Fernandez for The New York Times
For more information on today’s episode, visit nytimes.com/thedaily. Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.
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Democratic socialists have just notched another win, America has a new Air Force One, and President Trump’s unforgettable birthday party for the country might need to send out some more invites.
/ thefinancialexpress 
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NEW YORK, NY – NOVEMBER 07: Journalist Scott Pelley speaks onstage at the annual Freedom Award Benefit hosted by the International Rescue Committee at The Waldorf-Astoria on November 7, 2012 in New York City. (Photo by Michael Loccisano / Getty Images for IRC)
