Extra, Extra
Betting the Farm: “The Department of Homeland Security on Monday told staff that it was reversing guidance issued last week that agents were not to conduct immigration raids at farms, hotels and restaurants — a decision that stood at odds with President Donald Trump’s calls for mass deportations of anyone without legal status.” WaPo (Gift Article): Trump officials reverse guidance exempting farms, hotels from immigration raids.
+ Israel and Iran: While the fighting between Israel and Iran continued to escalate, there are signs that Iran’s position is rapidly weakening. Fewer of their missiles have landed in Israel, they’ve lost control of the skies over Tehran, Israel said it had killed Ali Shadmani, Iran’s new wartime chief of staff after killing his predecessor in its initial attack, and El Al is set to begin flights into Israel. Meanwhile, Trump says he wants an end to the conflict, but no one’s entirely sure what that means. (He either means a negotiated deal or a bunker buster.) German Chancellor Friedrich Merz: “This is the dirty work Israel is doing for all of us. We are also victims of this regime. This mullah regime has brought death and destruction to the world.” Here’s the latest from NBC and Times of Israel. With Hamas reeling and its backers facing attacks, why are things like this still happening in Gaza? Israeli forces kill dozens of Palestinians seeking aid.
+ Grant Rant: “I’ve sat on this bench now for 40 years. I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this.” Terminated NIH grants must be restored, judge orders.
+ Miss Information? “For the first time, social media has displaced television as the top way Americans get news. ‘The proportion accessing news via social media and video networks in the United States (54%) is sharply up,’ the report’s authors write, ‘overtaking both TV news (50%) and news websites/apps (48%) for the first time.'” For the first time, social media overtakes TV as Americans’ top news source. (With the endless panels, TV news barely even exists anymore.)
+ Export Hole: “As President Trump’s tariffs start to shut China out of the United States, its biggest market, Chinese factories are sending their toys, cars and shoes to other countries at a pace that is reshaping economies and geopolitics. This year so far, China’s trade surplus with the world is nearly $500 billion — a more than 40 percent increase from the same period last year.” NYT: China Is Unleashing a New Export Shock on the World. (Why am I not shocked.)
+ We’re History: “As A.I. becomes more capable of parsing large data sets, it seems inevitable that historians and other nonfiction writers will turn to it for assistance; in fact, as I discovered in surveying a wide variety of historians over the last few months, experiments with it are already far more common than I expected. But it also seems inevitable that this power to help search and synthesize historical texts will change the kinds of history books that are written. If history, per the adage, is written by the winners, then it’s not premature to wonder how the winners of the A.I. race might soon shape the stories that historians tell about the past.” Bill Wasik with an interesting look at how historians are using AI and how that might impact what they write. NYT Magazine (Gift Article): A.I. Is Poised to Rewrite History. Literally.
