Extra, Extra
New Lease on Life: The Justice Department has dropped its ridiculous case involving Jerome H. Powell’s handling of the Federal Reserve’s renovation. The case wasn’t dropped because it was a bunch of nonsense manufactured in a desperate attempt to target one of Trump’s enemies. It was dropped to clear the way for Kevin Warsh, the president’s pick for Fed chair, to be confirmed. The lesser corruption was removed to make way for the greater one. Welcome to 2026.
+ A Fact of Life: “The U.S. has burned through so many munitions in Iran that some administration officials increasingly assess that America couldn’t fully execute contingency plans to defend Taiwan from a Chinese invasion if it occurred in the near term, U.S. officials said.” WSJ (Gift Article): Fully replacing stockpiles of weapons fired in the Middle East could take up to six years. Meanwhile, the financial firm slash diplomacy team of Witkoff and Kushner is headed back to Pakistan for peace talks. Here’s the latest from The Guardian.
+ You Bet Your Life: “Federal prosecutors on Thursday unsealed an indictment against a U.S. Army special forces soldier, accusing him of using his insider knowledge of the clandestine military operation to capture Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro in January to reap more than $400,000 in profits on the popular prediction market site Polymarket.” Meanwhile, “Authorities in France are investigating possible tampering with a weather monitoring device at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris after an unusual temperature spike was recorded around the same time a Polymarket trader cashed in.” Yes, these cases of insider trading are worrisome. But don’t get lost in the weeds. There’s a whole jungle of problems related to prediction markets and the broader gambling ecosystem. US gambling addiction is ‘out of control’ as betting markets boom, policy expert warns.
+ On Life Support: “After it launched in December, Lutnick said that the government had sold $1.3 billion ‘worth’ in just several days, as Trump stood by holding up the gilded ticket and said, ‘essentially it’s the green card on steroids.'” More like just another lie on steroids. Trump’s ‘gold card’ visa starting at $1 million granted to just 1 person so far.
+ Life Isn’t All Sunshine and Rainbows: “Some critics say large solar farms are a public health threat. While there is little reputable evidence for this, their claims have helped power a backlash.” ProPublica: Unfounded Health Concerns Are Powering a Solar Backlash. (Coming soon: The Joe Rogan episode arguing that we should extinguish the sun and replace it with peptides.)
+ Your Money or Your Life: “For most students, Stanford is a normal competitive school, where people go to class and coffee shops and fall in love and freak out over finals. But a select few attend something else: a Stanford inside Stanford, where venture capitalists pursue 18- and 19-year-olds, handing out mentorships and money and invites to yacht parties in an attempt to convert promise into profit.” This is less the story of Stanford than the story of modern day Silicon Valley. Theo Baker in The Atlantic (Gift Article): The Stanford Freshmen Who Want to Rule the World. (If they wanted to rule the world, they should have gone to Cal.)
+ Life Imitates Art: If AI re-wrote the story of the boy who cried wolf, it might go something like this: “A 40-year-old man was arrested after using artificial intelligence to generate a fake image of a runaway wolf that South Korean authorities said obstructed an urgent investigation.” (The man should just say he thought he had created an image of a doctor.)
