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Tuesday, April 28, 2026

The new case stems from a photograph of seashells on a North Carolina beach.


Eighty percent of Republicans approve of President Trump's performance, but his national standing has dipped, especially among independents. That leaves several people who voted for Mr. Trump but who may not feel good about the direction of the country. For Opinion's latest focus group, conducted earlier this month, we spoke with voters like this: people who cast their ballots for Mr. Trump and said they were disappointed with his second term. A few said they even regretted their votes.


Monday, April 27, 2026

Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche is being sued for failing to release the full Jeffrey Epstein files as required by law. The lawsuit was filed in federal court in Washington, D.C, on Monday by lawyer and political commentator Katie Phang, who slammed Blanche and demanded that the Justice Department release all documents, along with an explanation for any redactions. She is also calling for the courts to appoint an expert to ensure that Blanche complies with the law. "This case is about Defendant Todd Blanche's brazen, shocking, and ongoing violation of the Epstein Files Transparency Act," the 15-page lawsuit reads.


"The Iranians are obviously very skilled at negotiating, or rather, very skillful at not negotiating, letting the Americans travel to Islamabad and then leave again without any result," [German Chancellor Friedrich Merz] said during a talk to students in the town of Marsberg. "An entire nation is being humiliated by the Iranian leadership, especially by these so-called Revolutionary Guards. And so I hope that this ends as quickly as possible," he added at the venue in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia.


Friday, April 24, 2026

The Department of Justice on Friday dropped its criminal investigation of Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell ... read more


Comments

More: "My response is that I stand by every single word of this report," she said. "We were very diligent. We were very careful. It went through multiple levels of editing, review, care.

"And I think one of the things that has been most gratifying, after " immediately after the story published was, I have been inundated by additional sourcing going up to the highest levels of the government, thanking us for doing the work, providing additional corroborating information."

Fitzpatrick said that she used more than two dozen sources for her original report, characterizing the officials she spoke to as "people who felt that not only was this conduct embarrassing, unbecoming, but that it was a national security vulnerability, and that Americans were perhaps less safe as a result."

Asked about some of the more shocking details in her report, she said: "I had never heard anything like this as a reporter, and I think I spent a very long time, a very diligent amount of time checking it out because it was so explosive.

"And I think the fact that this was known throughout the FBI, throughout the Justice Department, that it reached the White House is because it was so alarming. And people were really frightened."

She said some of her sources were not merely panicking but profoundly emotional in expressing their concerns to her, describing them as "grown men who have done nothing but counterintelligence and solving some of the worst-of-the-worst crimes who are not easily scared, intimidated, concerned."

"They were frightened," she said. "And that really stuck with me."

More: The publication of what appears to be a 22-point manifesto comes at a critical time for Palantir, which faces global criticism for its support of US President Donald Trump's controversial immigration crackdown and its backing of the Israeli military's actions in Gaza and the occupied West Bank.

Many have expressed alarm at the book's emphasis on cultural hierarchies and what it calls "regressive" cultures.

Eliot Higgins, the founder of the online investigations platform Bellingcat, sarcastically pointed out how "completely normal" it was for a tech company to post what he said was a manifesto attacking democratic norms. "It's also worth being clear about who's doing the arguing," Higgins added. "Palantir sells operational software to defence, intelligence, immigration & police agencies. These 22 points aren't philosophy floating in space, they're the public ideology of a company whose revenue depends on the politics it's advocating."

Mark Coeckelbergh, a Belgian philosopher of technology who teaches at the University of Vienna, described Palantir's messaging as an "example of technofascism", while Greek economist and former Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis said Palantir had effectively signalled a willingness "to add to nuclear Armageddon the AI-driven threat to humanity's existence".

Posting on social media, Arnaud Bertrand, the entrepreneur and geopolitical commentator, claimed that Palantir had revealed a dangerous "ideological agenda".

"They're effectively saying our tools aren't meant to serve your foreign policy. They're meant to enforce ours'," he wrote.

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