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Federal judges say White House ballroom construction can continue, for now

President Donald Trump has claimed that a building pause poses a risk to national security.

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Apr 11 • 1:32 PM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com
Appeals court says Trump White House ballroom construction can proceed for now

A federal appeals court said Saturday that President Donald Trump can move ahead for another week with construction of a massive new White House ballroom while judges consider the project.

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Apr 11 • 12:31 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
“AI polls” are fake polls

A few weeks after Donald Trump’s second presidential win, I took the train up from London (where I was living at the time) to Oxford to attend a conference on polls and forecasts of the 2024 election. Most of the attendees were pollsters or academics, but I also watched presentations from Aaru and Electric Twin, two companies that do what is interchangeably called synthetic sampling, silicon sampling, or synthetic audiences. Stripped of startup jargon, that means they use large language models (LLMs) to simulate responses to public opinion polls by having AI agents take on the role of survey respondents. I had already heard of Aaru thanks to some articles with eye-catching headlines like “No people, no problem: AI chatbots predict elections better than humans” in the months leading up to Election Day. The founders were making some big, some might even say far-fetched claims, such as: “within two years, we will simulate the entire globe — from the way crops are grown in Ukraine to how that impacts production of oil in Iraq, trade through the strait of Malacca, and elections for the mayor of Baltimore.” When Semafor asked Aaru’s cofounders — Cameron Fink and Ned Koh — about my boss, they said “we respect all those who came before us.” Nate (as he so often does) shared his thoughts on Twitter: Fink and Koh were relatively good-natured about this back-and-forth when we spoke at Oxford. They even offered to mail me one of the t-shirts featuring Nate’s quote they apparently had made. I never took them up on the offer, which I now somewhat regret. These synthetic sampling companies fell off my radar for a while, but they do still exist. In fact, Aaru recently received a $1 billion valuation. Is what they’re doing anywhere close to the most important frontier in AI development? Not by a longshot, especially when Anthropic just developed a model so adept at exploiting software vulnerabilities that it’s only being released to 40 companies. Still, silicon sampling is increasingly finding its way into public polling. Axios reported in March that “a majority of people trust their own doctors and nurses” based on findings from Aaru — without mentioning that the “people” in that sentence were actually LLMs. Around the same time, the Public Sentiment Institute “boosted” their online sample of 373 real survey respondents with 114 AI agents.1 (Spoiler alert: even the co-founder of Electric Twin doesn’t think that’s a particularly defensible approach.) Polling companies like Qualtrics and Ipsos are also developing synthetic data panels. So, what should we make of these … “polls”? Let’s get one thing out of the way: whatever they are, they’re not polls in the way that term is usually defined. Subscribe You can’t replace polls with AI On one hand, using LLMs to essentially make up fake survey respondents sort of sounds like the dumbest idea ever, one that will at best imperfectly replicate real polls while introducing all sorts of biases. On the other hand, with LLMs improving at a remarkable, perhaps even alarming rate, maybe that means I’m a dinosaur at the ripe old age of 24 because I still want to rely on polls that talk to actual people. I’m not going to argue that synthetic samples are completely useless. In fact, as I’ll return to later, there is evidence that some techniques can replicate topline survey results quickly and cheaply. But the marketing from certain companies can be slightly optimistic. “No traditional poll will exist by the time the next general election occurs,” said Fink in 2024. We’re just 206 days away from the midterms, and based on the fact that I still have to collect a bunch of polls every day, I’d say he should have run that prediction by a sample of AI agents before the interview.2 To see why synthetic samples can’t replace polls, here’s a quick primer on how they work. The simplest version of these models involves taking a LLM (like ChatGPT or Claude), giving it a demographic profile (e.g., a white, college-educated woman who lives in Utah and makes $70k a year), and then asking it to respond to a survey question. You repeat that process a few thousand times using different demographic profiles and end up with a sample of synthetic survey responses. The actual models used by private companies are more sophisticated than this, usually because they incorporate more hypothesized demographic characteristics for each agent and provide them with extra information. Aaru, for example, feeds agents a diet of news and information they’d be likely to consume, while Electric Twin incorporates their customers’ proprietary data about the audience they’re trying to replicate. The way Ben Warner, the co-founder of Electric Twin, explained it to me was “we have a large amount of data on […] for instance, 5,000 people. Can we make an accurate prediction of how they would respond to another question?” Still, it should be obvious why synthetic samples can’t replace polls. Polling is fundamentally a data collection process. We might use surveys to make predictions by feeding them into election forecasts, but the main purpose of a poll isn’t prediction, it’s gathering new data about what people think and how they feel. Silicon sampling, on the other hand, produces no new data. It’s simply a model: you input LLM training data, demographic prompts, and a bunch of other information, and it spits out a prediction for what a poll would say. We love models here, but models aren’t polls. That difference is an important philosophical sticking point for most pollsters I talk to. “I think politics should stay away from [synthetic sampling], because we’re trying to […] represent the voice of the people,” said Natalie Jackson, a vice president at GQR Insights. Democratic pollster John Hagner told me: “I think I’m just incredibly skeptical of this idea. I don’t think it’s research. At that point, you’re asking the machine to tell you what you already believe.” Hagner has seen some presentations of early synthetic sampling experiments, but so far, “if it’s being used in a campaign, people are keeping it incredibly quiet.”3 But Eli, I hear you saying, aren’t polls themselves increasingly governed by modeling decisions? Indeed they are: pollsters’ choices on which sampling method to use, how to define their likely voter models, and how to weight their samples can and do lead to dramatic differences in the results they publish. Aaru even referenced these limitations in the methodology statement included with that maternal mortality “poll” — although I’m using the term “methodology statement” loosely here, because it doesn’t really explain how the model works at all. We can ignore the (frankly preposterous) implication that synthetic sampling isn’t subject to a separate set of biases. The important point is that there’s still a meaningful difference between using weighting and other statistical techniques on actual polling data and using a model to predict what a poll would say. The latter is far closer to election forecasts or techniques like MRP — potentially useful models, but not a replacement for polls.4 To be fair, other synthetic sampling companies are perfectly happy with the distinction between polls and models. Warner compared polling and synthetic sampling to different tools in a toolbox. “The mistake I think we make is we think that these new tools should either work in exactly the same way or somehow replace these old tools,” he said. “Rather than thinking of it as, okay, so we’ve always had the hammer, we’ve always had the screwdriver, now we’ve got a saw. But don’t use a saw to try [to] do the job of a hammer.” A quick comment from Nate Eli didn’t ask me for a comment — rather rude of him, don’t you think? But since I’m editing this story, I figured I’d add a few quick thoughts rather than putting words in his mouth. Beyond the frequently misleading marketing, what bothers me about the AI “poll” hype is that as AI tools make statistical inference cheaper and/or better (note that these are not synonyms) that actually increases the comparative value of collecting original data. You might be able to train a model to make a reasonable estimate of what some hard-to-reach poll respondent would say — say, a young Black man who voted for Trump. (Such a person checks a number of boxes for a voter who is usually hard to reach in surveys.) Indeed, this is closely related to what models like the Silver Bulletin forecast already do. They essentially smooth out the kinks in noisy survey data by making inferences based on past voting patterns or national polls or surveys of other states. But you don’t actually know what these voters think unless you’re reaching them directly. If there’s a shift in opinion among this subgroup, you’re not going to detect it. So if I were running a campaign, I’d invest more in going the extra mile to find a representative sample of those voters. And then I’d hire some smart quants — or Claude? — to figure out the implications for campaign strategy based on proprietary data that my competitors didn’t have access to. -Nate Silver Are these models any good? If synthetic surveys are just a new type of model, the next obvious question is whether the models are at least accurate. The answer very much depends on who you ask. On one end of the spectrum, you have the maximalist argument that synthetic sampling is more accurate than actual polls. “It’s an incredibly challenging problem to go to someone and say ‘hey, we’re going to be more accurate at predicting human behavior than you, even when you talk to your customers directly’,” Koh recently told CNBC. In his view, synthetic sampling isn’t a saw to polling’s hammer, it’s “magic.” There’s certainly evidence that synthetic samples can replicate certain survey toplines. But if Aaru does have any examples of their approach outperforming the polls, they’re keeping those to themselves.5 Aaru’s 2024 election model, for example, had Kamala Harris leading in Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin on November 4th. And although they’ve since taken down their forecast page, they gave Harris a 50.5 percent chance of winning the race on November 2nd.6 After the election, Fink told Semafor he was happy enough with those results because they were “within margin of error,” a term that is completely meaningless when applied to a “sample” of AI agents. And of course, Aaru says their models have improved since 2024, so supposedly now they’d be more accurate than the polls? Still, their stronger argument is on cost: “We are significantly faster and cheaper than traditional polling, and still more accurate,” said Fink. The first two claims are undeniably true, but the third brings us to the opposite end of the spectrum. Both Jackson and Hagner are skeptical that these models are reliable for anything beyond replicating common survey toplines. “I just […] don’t think the machines are what we want when we’re looking for nuanced views. My example on this is people in Arizona and Nevada in 2024 who voted for Trump and voted for expanding abortion in their states on ballot initiatives,” said Jackson. Hagner identified another issue. Maybe the synthetic respondents, like sycophantic LLMs, are inhuman in one important way: they’re too nice. “The reports that have come through at the meetings that I’ve been at are that the early experiments on this, they cannot get respondents to be as racist or sexist or, frankly, as negative as human respondents,” he said. Academic research mostly agrees on this point. While there are some papers that show promising results when using LLMs to replicate polling data, most show that LLMs suffer from various quirks like producing too few “don’t know” responses and can seriously overpredict the favorability of politicians like Donald Trump and Kamala Harris. They also seem to struggle with too little variation between demographic subgroups, so the difference in predicted opinion between Democrats and Republicans, for example, is too small. When I asked Warner about these studies, his response to these papers was that just because academics can’t get synthetic sampling to work doesn’t mean that the technique doesn’t work in general. “Actually, the argument is, okay, yours does not [work]. That does not mean […] for this complex set of machinery, which uses a lot of investment, a lot of time, a lot of money, you can’t get it to work.” Cards on the table, I’m somewhat sympathetic to this argument because academics aren’t exactly great at making election forecasts. Usually, the people with skin in the game are the most accurate. Warner’s argument is that the approach Electric Twin takes — which includes, for example, making multiple predictions for each synthetic respondent using different models and prompts and subsequently averaging those to get a final prediction in a sort of ensemble forecast — produces better results than the simpler academic models. Warner shared a comparison between his method and the method from a recent academic paper with me, and Electric Twin was indeed able to get more accurate replication. But even still, he acknowledged that synthetic sampling “is not a crystal ball.” “If you asked me, do I think using other data sources will be more accurate than asking somebody who they will vote for, I would probably say no. But if you asked me ‘would your system be useful for our turnout modeling today?’ I would say yes.” For better or worse, it looks like the method is already getting more popular in the market research world. Most of the clients Aaru touts these days are businesses like EY and McDonald’s. And AI will probably begin to pop up in other parts of the political polling process. Pollsters are already using it to code open-ended survey responses, and some firms, like YouGov, are testing using LLMs to ask survey respondents questions. More worryingly, one danger to actual polls is that AI agents can be used to infiltrate online surveys. Most online polls use various checks to prevent that from happening, but there’s conflicting evidence on how effective those filters are and how prevalent AI agents currently are in online panels. If those agents ever become impossible to detect, it might spell the end of online polling, but the solution isn’t to replace all of your respondents with ChatGPT. Silver Bulletin is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support our work, consider becoming a subscriber. Subscribe 1 That particular poll obviously doesn’t meet Silver Bulletin standards for aggregation. But we exclude all Public Sentiment Institute polls from our averages because we classify them as an amateur polling firm. 2 You could argue that Fink meant the next presidential election, but (a) I’m also confident we’ll still have real polls in 2028 and (b) in that case he should have asked an LLM to define “general election.” 3 Quick caveat: that’s reporting from a Democratic pollster. It’s possible that Republicans are more willing to use AI in political campaigns. 4 Indeed, Silver Bulletin does not include “polls” produced by MRP in our forecasts or averages, and we think it’s extremely misleading when their practitioners describe them in a way that suggests original data had been collected among a large number of states or Congressional districts. 5 A recent report from Aaru and EY did show two examples of a synthetic estimate being closer than a survey to a real-world benchmark — but I’d take those findings with a grain of salt because the report reads more like an ad and didn’t involve any sort of prediction being made ahead of time. 6 For comparison, our odds for Harris on the same day were 48.2 percent.

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Apr 11 • 11:38 AM EDT • Technology • natesilver.net
Democrats denounce Trump’s plan to use foreign steel in White House ballroom

A New York Times report that the president was accepting a donation of foreign steel for the ballroom was seized on by Democrats.

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Apr 10 • 10:04 PM EDT • Politics • seattletimes.com
Melania Trump’s Epstein statement stunned White House aides but was in keeping with a first lady who does her own thing

With war raging and midterms on the horizon, the White House seemed to have finally shaken the Jeffrey Epstein saga that plagued the first year of Donald Trump’s second term. But for first lady Melania Trump, the Epstein story was still all consuming.

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Apr 10 • 7:35 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
Kentucky lumber mill faces 'perfect storm' after diesel prices spike

After struggling for months with the impact of tariffs, a Kentucky lumber mill is wrestling with a spike in diesel prices caused by the war in Iran.

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Apr 10 • 6:06 PM EDT • Politics • spectrumnews1.com
Trump administration unveils renderings of its proposed gold-accented arch

Designs for a towering, gold-accented triumphal arch near Arlington National Cemetery were revealed by the White House on Friday – providing more insight into the latest iteration of President Donald Trump’s desire to mold the physical footprint of Washington, DC, into his own vision.

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Apr 10 • 4:27 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
White House warns staff against insider trading on prediction markets

The White House recently warned staff not to engage in insider trading on prediction markets and other platforms, according to a White House official.

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Apr 10 • 1:34 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
Democrats Denounce Trump’s Plan to Use Foreign Steel in White House Ballroom

A New York Times report that the president was accepting a donation of foreign steel for the ballroom was seized on by Democrats.

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Apr 10 • 1:03 PM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com
How the White House tried – and failed – to push a candidate out of a Republican state Senate primary in Indiana

With Trump’s sights set on unseating Indiana lawmakers who opposed his redistricting effort, his aides and allies feared a third candidate could play spoiler in one race.

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Apr 10 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • nbcnews.com
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'Let's not underestimate the achievement' - Dallas on Leeds' season

Former Leeds United cult hero and promotion winner Stuart Dallas says the Whites have "more than enough" to avoid relegation this season and he is "confident" they will do so. Daniel Farke's side beat West Ham last weekend to reach the FA Cup semi-finals for the first time since 1987 and are four points outside the Premier League relegation zone with seven games to play. "Let's not underestimate the achievement of the club getting to a semi-final of the FA Cup and still being in a strong position to stay up," he told BBC Radio Leeds as he opened a new padel court in the city.

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Apr 10 • 3:52 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Former Trump White House insider says she’d bet the President did not get a heads up about the First Lady’s Epstein remarks
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Apr 10 • 12:39 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
In private meeting, Trump soothes disenchanted MAHA leaders

White House officials solicited messaging ideas from leaders of the Make America Healthy Again movement, which has soured on some recent administration actions.

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Apr 9 • 11:35 PM EDT • Politics • seattletimes.com
Scientists May Have Found a New Cause of High Blood Pressure, And a Way to Treat It

There's an urgent need for new treatment options.

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Apr 9 • 11:16 PM EDT • Science • sciencealert.com
Slotkin talks to Ohio voters amid questions about her national ambitions

Elissa Slotkin's national tour of states Trump won in 2024 has included Iowa and Ohio this week, two states pivotal to capturing the White House.

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Apr 9 • 10:17 PM EDT • Politics • detroitnews.com
White House Warned Staff Not to Engage in Insider Trading Amid War With Iran

The directive came amid a surge of suspiciously well-timed trades on oil and prediction markets just ahead of crucial moments in the conflict.

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Apr 9 • 8:56 PM EDT • Politics • nytimes.com
White House budget puts 54 NASA science missions on the chopping block

Experts found that the White House budget request for the upcoming fiscal year could defund 54 NASA science missions, including a spacecraft currently studying Jupiter and two planned Venus missions

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Apr 9 • 5:35 PM EDT • Science • scientificamerican.com
Restaurant, entertainment venue proposed for Whitestown

A family-family friendly restaurant and entertainment venue with duckpin bowling and golf simulators might be coming to Whitestown.

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Apr 9 • 5:08 PM EDT • Entertainment • insideindianabusiness.com
Iran war tests Trump’s most enduring political gifts

The Iran war is ending. Or so the White House says. The last-minute ceasefire this week in a conflict that has convulsed capitals from Washington to Brussels to Tehran has left several key issues up in the air. What does it mean politically? And will it last?

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Apr 9 • 3:41 PM EDT • Politics • reuters.com
NATO chief signals allies may act on Hormuz, warns of ‘unhealthy codependence’ on US

Rutte signals a possible coalition to secure the Strait of Hormuz after meeting Trump, but the White House says NATO was tested and already failed.

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Apr 9 • 2:21 PM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com
Democrats grow bolder on talk about removing Trump from office after his Iran threats

While President Donald Trump eventually pulled back on his threat and agreed to a two-week ceasefire with Iran, Democrats face growing demands to oppose the Republican president in the strongest possible terms.

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Apr 9 • 12:12 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org
Trump Totally Wants to Appoint His Own Pope, Doesn’t He?

Apparently, the White House and the Vatican are feuding. The historical precedents for this kind of power struggle are so absolutely delicious.

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Apr 9 • 11:53 AM EDT • Politics • esquire.com
A deal or a mirage? Trump’s Iran ceasefire collides with chaos on the ground

Less than three hours before President Donald Trump’s 8 p.m. deadline for Iran to make a deal or face his apocalyptic warning of death and destruction, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and Joint Chiefs Chairman Gen. Dan Caine, the country’s top two military officials, were summoned to the White House.

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Apr 9 • 10:31 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
Every way Trump has changed Washington, DC, in his second term

Trump is reshaping Washington, DC, with a $400 million White House ballroom, federal building banners, and new monument proposals.

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Apr 9 • 9:36 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
As Trump throws lifeline to coal plants, critics warn of higher costs and health risks

WASHINGTON (AP) — Before Donald Trump returned to the White House, the Biden administration and many electric utilities were building a future dominated by renewable energy. They aimed to replace coal, slashing greenhouse gases and reducing air pollution that kills more than a thousand people ann...

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Apr 9 • 7:48 AM EDT • Health • wral.com
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Judges keep knocking down weak DC gun cases brought by Jeanine Pirro’s office

The Trump White House touted its surge of National Guard members to Washington, DC, last summer as the way to put more dangerous perpetrators in the nation’s capital behind bars. But in nearly a dozen criminal cases since the surge began, people who were found to be carrying weapons and charged in federal court have walked free.

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Apr 9 • 5:00 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
Trump promised to clamp down on health insurers. His policies are enriching them

In December, Trump said he would summon health insurance execs to the White House. It doesn't seem a meeting ever happened.

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Apr 9 • 4:30 AM EDT • Health • statnews.com
☹️ Negative (-16%)
High Health Care Costs Are Fueling a New Fight Over Old Laws

The White House wants states to drop certificate of need laws in hopes of lowering health care costs. Researchers and state leaders are split.

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Apr 9 • 3:01 AM EDT • Health • tradeoffs.org
Trump renews proposals to slash US science agency budgets

White House requests a 55% reduction to the National Science Foundation's budget, with other agencies facing similar cuts

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Apr 8 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • chemistryworld.com
Trump to discuss leaving NATO in meeting with alliance’s leader, White House says

The president, long a NATO skeptic, has been especially angry at alliance members in recent weeks for declining to take part in the U.S.-Israeli war on Iran.

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Apr 8 • 6:49 PM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com
UIndy Researchers Recognized by Indiana Academy of Science

Rochelle Maxson ’26 and Dr. Marc Milne, professor of biology, were awarded for their work at the annual meeting of the Indiana Academy of Science (IAS). The IAS seeks to bring together Indiana scientists, researchers, and educators across all disciplines to share discoveries and advance science. The Academy’s 2026 meeting had a record number of

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Apr 8 • 2:25 PM EDT • Science • news.uindy.edu
WATCH LIVE: White House holds briefing as Trump agrees to two-week ceasefire in Iran war
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Apr 8 • 12:31 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org
🙂 Positive (35%)
Washington’s most powerful drug industry lobbyist is stepping down

Steve Ubl built PhRMA into a more aggressive operation as its longtime leader. The White House has tangled with Ubl and the pharmaceutical industry in its bid to lower drug prices.

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Apr 8 • 12:28 PM EDT • Health • washingtonpost.com
Jamie Dimon warned high taxes would push business out of New York, but the city is honing its edge over Miami in attracting top talent, report finds

More skilled professionals are moving to New York than Florida, according to a white paper from real estate firm JLL shared exclusively with Fortune.

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Apr 8 • 12:23 PM EDT • Business • fortune.com
White House Budget For 2027 Set To Slash Science, Climate, And Environment Funding By Billions

Meanwhile, the military is hoping to receive a 44 percent increase in funding.

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Apr 8 • 12:16 PM EDT • Science • iflscience.com
State House hearing focuses on gaps in racial wealth, home, business ownership

Despite some modest gains, Blacks and Latinos in Massachusetts are trailing whites in homeownership, business ownership, and wealth accumulation, state officials said during a State House hearing held last week.

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Apr 8 • 9:20 AM EDT • Business • dotnews.com
😐 Neutral (0%)
A new generation of politicians of colour is emerging in France. The backlash speaks volumes

Local elections have led to a surge of racism in a country that still struggles to see itself as anything other than white, says Guardian Europe columnist Rokhaya Diallo

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Apr 8 • 7:00 AM EDT • Politics • theguardian.com
How the Journal Covered Trump’s 12-Hour Iran ‘Civilization’ Countdown

Plus, the White House decided to hang on to Kristi Noem’s $70 million jet.

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Apr 8 • 6:58 AM EDT • Politics • wsj.com
Donald Trump's 'Save College Sports' executive order lands with a shrug inside college football

Trump's "Save College Sports" executive order proposes transfer and eligibility limits and threatens funding penalties. College football GMs say it won't hold up in court.

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Apr 7 • 2:11 PM EDT • Sports • cbssports.com
Orioles-Cardinals Trade Brings Relief To An Injured O's Bullpen

The Baltimore Orioles added bullpen depth on Tuesday by acquiring left-hander Nick Raquet from the St. Louis Cardinals in exchange for infielder/outfielder Brayden Smith. According to the Orioles X account, Raquet has not yet reported to the team; Raquet was designated for assignment by the Cardinals on Sunday. On Monday, the Orioles placed left-hander Dietrich Enns on the 15-day injured list with a left foot infection and called up right-hander Brandon Young to start Monday against the Chicago White Sox.

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Apr 7 • 10:54 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
White House Looking to Cut $3.4 Billion From NASA Science

The 2027 budget proposes to end major scientific initiatives in favor of crewed missions to the Moon and Mars.

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Apr 7 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • yahoo.com
MAGA Is Winning Its War Against U.S. Science

Source: NBER With all the other terrible news right now, you may not have noticed that Donald Trump is in the process of killing American science. OK, that’s an exaggeration — but not that much of an exaggeration. The Trump administration’s latest budget proposal calls for a gigantic increase in military spending combined with severe cuts to social programs. But as the chart above shows, it also calls for debilitating reductions in research funding. Furthermore, Trump appointees have already been strangling science by sharply reducing the rate at which research grants are approved. Here, for example, is the number of new grants approved by the National Science Foundation: Source: Nature Large numbers of existing grants have also been frozen or terminated, especially in the study of infectious diseases. Add to this a sharp drop in visas issued to foreign students, who often play a direct role in research and who help support academic departments that do research: Put all of this together, and much U.S. scientific research is set to come to a screeching halt — not a few years from now, but over the course of the next year or two. This new assault on U.S. science is taking place at a time when the role of American science in the world has already been greatly eroded. The chart below, based on research recently reported by the National Bureau of Economic Research, measures national strength in science by the share of publications in highly ranked journals. In the 1990s the United States had more such publications than the rest of the world combined. Since then we’ve dropped into third place — well behind China and slightly below the European Union. And this was before the Trump administration’s attack on science had time to take its full effect. Source Some erosion in U.S. scientific preeminence was inevitable given China’s growing sophistication and wealth. But we’ve also fallen behind Europe, even though everyone says that Europe is lagging economically and technologically. Claims about Europe’s underperformance are, in fact, dubious if one looks hard at the data. But it’s still striking to see America lagging. What’s going on? There are presumably multiple factors behind America’s scientific lag. But even before Trump II the growing hostility of the U.S. right to science surely had some negative effect. And since the rise of MAGA G.O.P. attitudes toward science in general have become overwhelmingly hostile. This is true even for the Republican rank and file: And while I haven’t been able to find good survey data, it’s obvious that the anti-science turn has been even more pronounced — and began earlier — among the Republican political elite. Chris Mooney published The Republican War on Science in 2005, and even then was describing a longstanding trend. Why have Republicans turned so anti-science? Part of the answer is that they believe that scientists don’t support them. And they’re right! A study of who scientists give money to shows that only a small percentage gave money to Republicans even 20 years ago, and that almost none of them donate to Republicans now: Social scientists have always been strongly pro-Democratic, while there used to be a significant number of physical, “hard” scientists supporting the GOP. But these days physicists are almost as uniformly Democratic, or at least non-Republican, as sociologists. Why are there almost no Republican scientists? It’s not a mystery. GOP political orthodoxy includes positions that are at odds with the scientific consensus on multiple issues, ranging from the validity of the theory of evolution, to the reality of climate change, to the efficacy and safety of vaccines. In each case the scientific consensus is solidly grounded in evidence. But even before the rise of MAGA the U.S. right was increasingly hostile to evidence-based policymaking — especially, of course, where the evidence is unfavorable to fossil fuel interests or quack medicine, both financial mainstays of right-wing politics. So scientists don’t support Republicans, and the feeling is mutual. Today’s Republican Party doesn’t like science or scientists. It doesn’t like having its preconceived views challenged by appeals to evidence. It knows that very few scientists are on its side electorally. In general, it sees scientific research as a threat to its grasp on political power. Add in MAGA’s combination of rabid anti-intellectualism and allergy to any hint of criticism, and one has the makings of a drastic anti-science turn in policy. “Ignorance is strength” might was well be an official MAGA motto. And as I said, we aren’t talking about something that will happen over the course of multiple years: The U.S. scientific enterprise is threatened with severe damage, even collapse, over just the next year. There are many reasons to find this prospect horrifying: Think of all the beneficial advances, affecting almost every part of life, that won’t happen because U.S. science — still crucial to the world — has been eviscerated. But think, also, of America’s international standing. Can a nation that has forfeited its role as a leader, or even a contender, in global science, still be a Great Power? No. MUSICAL CODA

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Apr 7 • 6:31 AM EDT • Science • paulkrugman.substack.com
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Vance makes time to visit Hungary to support Orbán amid Iran negotiations

The war with Iran is raging, gas prices continue to rise and spending battles persist on Capitol Hill. So why is the number two man in the White House flying to Budapest?

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Apr 7 • 12:02 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
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27%
Columbia stands to lose tens of millions as White House reopens push to cut science funding

Columbia stands to lose tens of millions in federal funding for fiscal year 2027 if Congress accepts a new budget request from President Donald Trump, released on Friday, which seeks to cut over $15 billion from federal science agencies.

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Apr 6 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • columbiaspectator.com
Antonio White: SB 1296 isn’t about accountability — it silences Florida public workers

SB 1296 debate raises concerns over public worker rights

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Apr 6 • 5:20 PM EDT • Politics • floridapolitics.com
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😐 Neutral (9%)
wow
54%
ahah
46%
With the Easter Bunny at his side, Trump won’t stop talking about Iran

The White House Easter Egg Roll has evolved with the times, weathering wars and pandemics. And on Monday, it became the site of multiple presidential gaggles as President Donald Trump fielded questions about the war with Iran.

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Apr 6 • 4:20 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
At White House Easter Egg Roll, Trump talks bomb threats and bunnies

Children in sundresses and bow ties pranced on the White House lawn as President Donald Trump addressed his threats to bomb Iranian power plants.

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Apr 6 • 3:48 PM EDT • Politics • usatoday.com
Trump’s many threats of possible war crimes reach a crescendo in Iran

After more than a decade floating actions that might constitute war crimes, US President Donald Trump is threatening to make good on such threats in Iran.

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Apr 6 • 3:10 PM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
Nicholas Singleton, Noah Whittington fits for Seahawks in draft

Penn State running back Nicholas Singleton as well as Oregon RB Noah Whittington offer much reason for the Seahawks to consider them in the draft.

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Apr 6 • 12:27 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
😐 Neutral (13%)
wow
100%
Trump Appears At White House Egg Roll—Combatting Health Rumors

Trump was spotted Sunday arriving back at the White House, the first time he’d been seen since Wednesday.

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Apr 6 • 11:20 AM EDT • Health • forbes.com
WATCH LIVE: Trumps hold White House Easter Egg Roll as Iran war escalates
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Apr 6 • 10:14 AM EDT • Politics • pbs.org
Supreme Court clears path for Trump’s DOJ to dismiss criminal case against Steve Bannon

The Supreme Court on Monday cleared the way for President Donald Trump’s administration to drop the government’s criminal case against Steve Bannon, a former White House adviser convicted in 2022 of defying a subpoena from lawmakers investigating the January 6, 2021, Capitol riot.

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Apr 6 • 9:33 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
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😐 Neutral (1%)
wow
53%
ahah
47%
National parks that feel like another world, from frequent US traveler

I've visited all 63 major US national parks and think places like Bryce Canyon, Death Valley, White Sands, and Badlands feel like another planet.

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Apr 6 • 9:01 AM EDT • Business • businessinsider.com
Jeanine Pirro’s office keeps prosecuting Trump’s foes. Some DC jurors are pushing back

The DC US attorney’s office under Jeanine Pirro has had an unusually low win rate in trials in Washington’s federal district court this year, at a moment when the White House has been clamoring for President Donald Trump’s Justice Department to deliver on prosecutions.

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Apr 6 • 6:00 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
America’s Diplomat Shortage Is a Self-Inflicted Wound

The White House’s struggles to negotiate an off-ramp in Iran are a reminder of how crucial skilled diplomacy can be. Yet the State Department appears intent on purging and politicizing the ranks of the nation’s top envoys. Congress has a duty to push back.

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Apr 6 • 6:00 AM EDT • Politics • bloomberg.com
Bengals News (4/6): Taking Andrew Whitworth’s advice

Andrew Whitworth cares enough to want to help.

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Apr 6 • 6:00 AM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
The inside scoop of UWW-TV sports

Sports coverage has never been limited to one format. It varies from written recaps to watching highlights or listening on the radio. Providing these services is important for engagement within a community, and it has been proven with Whitewater being an example of growth and connection through sports. Students and locals can tune into media...

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Apr 6 • 1:01 AM EDT • Sports • royalpurplenews.com
Trump’s 2027 budget proposes deep cuts to science programs

Domestic agencies would face $73 billion in cuts, including reduced funding for scientific research and health and environmental programs

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Apr 5 • 8:00 PM EDT • Science • cen.acs.org
White House Melts Down for Second Day Over Trump Health Claims

The White House snapped after a post pointed out Trump’s days-long absence from public view.

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Apr 5 • 7:42 PM EDT • Health • thedailybeast.com
Live updates: C's host Raptors for Easter Sunday game at TD Garden

The Celtics are set to host the Raptors for an Eastern Sunday matinee at TD Garden. Follow our live blog for updates.

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Apr 5 • 2:12 PM EDT • Sports • nbcsportsboston.com
Trump loses across courts in bruising week of immigration and legal setbacks

Trump suffered an onslaught of court losses this last week on immigration, Jan. 6 liability and the White House ballroom.

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Apr 5 • 6:00 AM EDT • Politics • latimes.com
White House shuts down speculation about Trump’s absence over health: ‘literally never stops working’
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Apr 4 • 11:58 PM EDT • Health • yahoo.com
'SNL' recap: Jack Black joins the Five-Timers Club

Jack Black returns to Studio 8H to host 'Saturday Night Live' for the fifth time, while Jack White makes his sixth turn as musical guest.

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Apr 4 • 11:38 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com
White House Forced to Address Claims of Trump Health Crisis

Administration officials aren’t having any of the gossip about the president’s health.

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Apr 4 • 6:43 PM EDT • Health • thedailybeast.com
Fact check: New Trump video surfaces amid health concerns; ‘DJT released from hospital’

As concerns about Donald Trump's health surfaced on social media on Saturday, the White House issued an urgent statement

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Apr 4 • 6:07 PM EDT • Health • hindustantimes.com
White Sox's Munetaka Murakami hits 4th HR in 1st 8 MLB games, besting Shohei Ohtani's record by Japanese player
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Apr 4 • 6:01 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
White House denies Trump is in the hospital as new health rumors explode

The White House has denied that President Trump visited Walter Reed National Military Medical Center as the Republican president's health has been a major focal point of his second term

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Apr 4 • 5:36 PM EDT • Health • aol.com
White House denies Trump is in the hospital as new health rumors explode

The White House has denied that President Trump visited Walter Reed National Military Medical Center as the Republican president's health has been a major focal point of his second term

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Apr 4 • 3:48 PM EDT • Health • aol.com
🎥 Ben White's nightmare continues with shocking FA Cup mistake

It's not easy being Ben White at the moment.The Arsenal defender found himself booed by England supporters on his long-awaited international return, and things have not gotten much better at club leve...

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Apr 4 • 3:46 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
☹️ Negative (-10%)
ahah
50%
sad
50%
Trump administration asks appeals court to pause order halting White House ballroom construction

w p n national-security courts politics washington-news general-news | 100.1 FM and AM 1020 KDKA

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Apr 4 • 1:52 PM EDT • Politics • audacy.com
😐 Neutral (0%)
wow
100%
Judge halts Trump effort requiring colleges to show they aren’t considering race in admissions

White House lawyers get another setback.

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Apr 4 • 12:18 PM EDT • Politics • floridapolitics.com
Marco Rubio's odds of being GOP 2028 nominee climb, while Ron DeSantis falls behind Tucker Carlson

Could Florida men make another run for the White House?

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Apr 4 • 10:42 AM EDT • Politics • floridapolitics.com
Trump administration proposes massive budget cuts to science

The White House budget proposal would also curb federal payments for scientific publishing

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Apr 4 • 9:30 AM EDT • Science • scientificamerican.com
Moms for Liberty wanted a seat on the school board. Trump gave them a voice in the White House

The parental rights group continues to make inroads.

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Apr 4 • 8:45 AM EDT • Politics • floridapolitics.com
Trump Slashed Funding for Science. Now the U.S. Faces a Costly Brain Drain.

The White House’s attacks on academia and budget cuts for research have provided an opening for other countries to poach leading scientists.

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Apr 4 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • nytimes.com
RFK Jr. launches midterm travel push to shore up ‘MAHA’ support

The Trump White House counts RFK Jr. as a top surrogate – but he comes with downsides, too.

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Apr 4 • 7:00 AM EDT • Politics • politico.com
Dead insects. Fuzzy white growth. Expired foods. Worst SC Midlands March restaurant inspections

There are plenty of great restaurants in the Midlands, but many don’t meet the state’s health and safety standards.

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Apr 4 • 6:00 AM EDT • Health • thestate.com
Arizona Diamondbacks Gameday Thread, #8: 4/3 vs. Braves

Today’s Lineups BRAVES DIAMONDBACKS Ronald Acuna – RF Ketel Marte – 2B Drake Baldwin – DH Corbin Carroll – RF Ozzie Albies – 2B Geraldo Perdomo – SS Matt Olson – 1B Gabriel Moreno – DH Austin Riley – 3B Nolan Arenado – 3B Eli White – LF Alek Thomas – CF Mauricio Dubon – […]

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Apr 3 • 9:00 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Deep dive
😐 Neutral (5%)
ahah
46%
wow
31%
love
23%
Pope Leo's political voice and how much influence he holds

Pope Leo XIV is the first American to lead the Catholic Church, and after nearly a year of advocating for the poor and cautiously opposing controversial U.S. policies, Leo is offering a more public contrast with Trump. Compass Points moderator Nick Schifrin discusses the pope's first year and what his recent criticism says with Joseph Capizzi, Father Thomas Reese, Annie Selak and Stephen White.

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Apr 3 • 7:30 PM EDT • Politics • pbs.org
🙂 Positive (35%)
Trump gives rare praise to persistent GOP foe after White House ballroom vote

Trump gives a special shout out to Sen. Rand Paul after the fiscal hawk votes yes on plans for the estimated $400 million White House ballroom project.

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Apr 3 • 3:47 PM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com
Ozzie Guillén, who led White Sox to World Series win, brought to tears after hearing team will retire his number
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Apr 3 • 3:45 PM EDT • Sports • sports.yahoo.com
Business moves from mall to across the street

Kay Jewelers is on the move from White Oaks Mall.

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Apr 3 • 3:11 PM EDT • Business • capitolcitynow.com
Pritzker calls on Trump officials to testify over ICE crackdown, White House blasts move as ‘political stunt’

Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker calls on Trump administration officials to testify before his commission targeting ICE enforcement operations in the state.

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Apr 3 • 3:09 PM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com
NIH would get $5 billion cut under Trump’s 2027 budget, but Congress unlikely to go along

The White House is asking Congress to cut $5 billion from the National Institutes of Health and downsize the number of institutes and centers from 27 to 22

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Apr 3 • 1:50 PM EDT • Health • statnews.com
White House proposes 23% cut to NASA budget, slashing science funding and prioritizing moon missions

The White House is proposing $18.8 billion for NASA's fiscal year 2027 budget, reducing science funding while prioritizing moon missions.

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Apr 3 • 12:51 PM EDT • Science • yahoo.com
Trump Budget Seeks to Fund NASA’s Lunar Base, Cut Total Spending

The White House is once again asking Congress to cut NASA’s science budget nearly in half, mimicking an effort last year that was rejected by lawmakers.

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Apr 3 • 12:07 PM EDT • Science • bloomberg.com
White House proposes 12% cut to federal health agencies in 2027 budget request

Congress largely ignored President Trump's previous budget proposal, instead boosting federal health spending.

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Apr 3 • 11:35 AM EDT • Health • statnews.com
The Entertainment Report: ‘The Super Mario Galaxy Movie,’ Blake Lively, and the White Sox

Cindy Pearlman Gaber, senior writer for the New York Times and entertainment columnist for the Las Vegas Review-Journal, joins Bob Sirott to discuss movies to watch this weekend, an update on Blake…

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Apr 3 • 11:23 AM EDT • Entertainment • wgnradio.com
White House seeks massive increase in defense spending with $1.5 trillion ask in new budget request

The White House is seeking roughly $1.5 trillion for defense as part of a fiscal 2027 budget request – a proposal that would boost military spending to its highest point in modern history as the Trump administration wages its war with Iran.

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Apr 3 • 9:39 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
Trump calls for a major increase in defense spending alongside cuts in domestic spending

The White House is releasing details of President Donald Trump’s 2027 budget, including a $1.5 trillion defense spending request. That's the largest of its kind in decades.

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Apr 3 • 9:16 AM EDT • Politics • pbs.org
What is the skinny budget and what does it mean for NASA?

The White House Office of Management and Budget has released its budget for fiscal year 2027. Here's what it includes, and what it means for NASA.

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Apr 3 • 8:00 AM EDT • Science • planetary.org
Todd Blanche takes over the Justice Department, where there’s no escaping the Epstein files shadow

Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche, who President Donald Trump tapped Thursday to serve as the interim head of the Justice Department, managed the day-to-day operations of the department over the past year, often taking a more public-facing role when Pam Bondi was in hot water with White House officials.

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Apr 3 • 12:01 AM EDT • Politics • cnn.com
Michigan Gov. Whitmer signs executive directive for agencies to help businesses receive tariff refunds
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Apr 2 • 7:13 PM EDT • Business • cbsnews.com
High-Signal Publisher
Kenosha barbershop owner sees higher prices due to tariffs

A White House spokesperson defended the President’s tariffs, saying he's use them to renegotiate trade deals and lower drug prices.

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Apr 2 • 4:30 PM EDT • Politics • spectrumnews1.com
Deep dive
😐 Neutral (13%)
wow
75%
ahah
25%
Federal panel packed with Trump allies approves White House ballroom project

The vote by the National Capital Planning Commission on Thursday marked the final procedural hurdle for President Donald Trump’s plans.

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Apr 2 • 2:28 PM EDT • Politics • washingtonpost.com
‘Good riddance’: Mass. politicians react to Pam Bondi’s removal as attorney general

The move ends the contentious tenure of a loyalist who upended the Justice Department’s culture of independence from the White House.

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Apr 2 • 1:41 PM EDT • Politics • wgbh.org
Donald Trump fires Pam Bondi as Attorney General

The former Florida Attorney General will return to the private sector, White House sources confirmed.

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Apr 2 • 1:39 PM EDT • Politics • floridapolitics.com
Deep dive
😐 Neutral (10%)
wow
67%
ahah
33%
Pam Bondi already fired as attorney general, Cabinet official teed up as replacement: sources

President Donald Trump reportedly fired Attorney General Pam Bondi and is considering replacing her with EPA Director Lee Zeldin, sources familiar with the matter say.

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Apr 2 • 12:14 PM EDT • Politics • foxnews.com
Whitney Cummings says Ghislaine Maxwell 'probably trying to not hang herself' in prison

Whitney Cummings shocked 'The View' by saying that Jeffrey Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell is 'probably trying to not hang herself' in prison.

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Apr 2 • 12:01 PM EDT • Entertainment • ew.com
White House ballroom expected to get approved days after ruling halting work

A spokesperson for the National Capital Planning Commission says the agency is moving ahead with Thursday's vote because the judge's ruling affects construction activities, not planning

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Apr 2 • 8:05 AM EDT • Politics • spectrumlocalnews.com