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The money would go toward security improvements as part of an East Wing construction project, including a new ballroom that President Trump has said would be built with private dollars.
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(Main headline, 1st story, link)
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Officials withheld a detainee's overseas arrest warrant from a federal judge. When she ordered his release, they used the same information to attack her publicly.
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We speak with Middle East history professor Toby Jones about the ongoing crisis in the Strait of Hormuz, where overlapping blockades by Iran and the United States have disrupted shipping and the wider global economy since the start of the war in late February. Jones says this latest conflict is part of a decadeslong project by the United States to exert imperial control over the oil-rich region, but that it's now in danger of a strategic loss signaling a deeper imperial decline.
"Through an unprovoked assault on Iran, Trump has accelerated, or at least clarified, the real limits of American imperial power," says Jones. "He's definitely put the United States in a much more vulnerable and weakened position globally as a result of this war."
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As President Trump continues to attack media organizations and journalists, we speak with a sitting member of the Federal Communications Commission about how the administration has weaponized the FCC to go after his perceived enemies in the media. Anna Gomez is the sole Democratic commissioner on the FCC, which is currently operating with just three commissioners instead of the usual five. She criticizes the agency's recently announced review of ABC television licenses, which comes after President Trump called for the firing of ABC late-night host Jimmy Kimmel. Under Chair Brendan Carr, the FCC has repeatedly gone after critics of the president by threatening to revoke valuable broadcast licenses.
"This administration is using any point of leverage that it has to go after its critics," says Gomez, who was appointed by President Joe Biden in 2023.
Gomez also discusses how media consolidation impacts public choice, including the pending merger between Paramount Skydance and Warner Bros. Discovery, which would bring an unprecedented number of properties under the ownership of the Trump-aligned Ellison family.
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At a White House event for Small Business Week, he described the economy as "roaring" and predicted that gas prices would go down soon.
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We discuss the ongoing crisis in the Strait of Hormuz with the Quincy Institute for Responsible Statecraft's Trita Parsi. U.S. officials are denying Iranian reports that a U.S. vessel was struck by Iranian missiles amid the two countries' dual blockade of the strait. The warring nations still say they are observing a fragile temporary ceasefire as negotiations continue for a possible longer-term deal. However, says Parsi, "both sides are making maximalist demands," so a diplomatic solution is unlikely. "As long as Trump continues to listen to those forces, the very same forces that also sold him this blockade that has backfired, we're not going to see a diplomatic breakthrough. It requires a far more disciplined and flexible approach to negotiations, and right now we're not seeing that from either side."
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We speak with Lebanese-born academic Gilbert Achcar about the U.S.-Israeli war against Iran, U.S. foreign policy under President Trump and more. Achcar says Trump's military actions in Venezuela and Iran are not as dramatic a departure from U.S. policy as some commentators have suggested, calling it "an old-new imperial doctrine." While the George W. Bush administration believed in "regime change," says Achcar, Trump is "just going back to 19th-century gunboat diplomacy: You bomb a country until they submit."
Achcar's new book is Gaza Catastrophe: The Genocide in World-Historical Perspective.
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The United Arab Emirates announced Tuesday it would be leaving OPEC, the Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries, on May 1. The UAE has long disagreed with Saudi Arabia over oil production quotas and says it is leaving the group to focus on "national interests" and increase its production capacity.
"The fact that the UAE has pulled out means that this cartel will have less ability to be able to push up the price when it wants," says Akshat Rathi, senior climate reporter at Bloomberg News. "We've already seen some of it not working, because there are all these other producers, like the U.S.A., but also places like Guyana, that are increasing their production a lot."
Meanwhile, Rathi adds that as countries across the globe brace for the ripple effects of the energy shocks created by the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran, transitions to clean energy could be accelerated. "In the past, when countries were faced with this kind of energy shock, they had options that were quite limited," says Rathi. But now countries can "try and deploy as much renewables so that they can build energy supply at home."
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