Donald Trump’s approach to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has always been to root for Russia while pretending he isn’t. Trump just hates killing and death. More than that, he hates sending American money overseas. The claim that he actually agrees with Moscow is a hoax, remember. Trump is all about putting America first. Or so he’s said, and so his mostly non-Russophilic supporters claim to believe.
But now he has flung the mask to the ground.
The anxiety of influence, a phrase that the literary critic Harold Bloom coined in 1973 to describe the struggle to write innovative poetry, lives on today in the form of reheated nachos. In internet slang, to reheat someone else’s nachos is to take old, soggy ideas and serve them up as if they’re fresh. An interviewer recently asked Lady Gaga to reply to the accusation that she was doing just that with “Abracadabra,” her new single that conjures many of her older songs.
The normally bullish Trump over the weekend declined to rule out the possibility of a full-blown recession as his tariff policies threaten to spark a massive global trade war.
Immigration agents with the Department of Homeland Security have detained a leader of the Gaza solidarity encampment at Columbia University in New York. Mahmoud Khalil, who is an Algerian citizen of Palestinian descent, is a green card holder and is married to a U.S. citizen; his wife is eight months pregnant. Immigration officials told Khalil’s lawyer his green card was being revoked.
Scientists rallied nationwide last Friday in opposition to the Trump administration’s sweeping cuts for scientific research and mass layoffs impacting numerous agencies, including the National Institutes of Health, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration and the National Weather Service. Thousands gathered at Stand Up for Science protests in over two dozen other cities. We air remarks from speakers in Washington, D.C., including former USAID official Dr. Atul Gawande and Dr.
Neither of these companies needs to have its hand in another industry.
This was supposed to be the college presidents hearing redux. It didn’t work out that way.
The only thing holding this country together is the promise of a little treat, and these tariffs may just take them away.
My quest to understand the 5,600-square-foot architectural curiosity that appeared next door.
The health secretary’s muted response to the first major disease outbreak on his watch worries even some allies.
The Covid contrarian’s Senate confirmation hearing to lead the National Institutes of Health promises another airing of pandemic grievances.
An Idaho hospital is stepping in to argue that the state’s near-total abortion ban violates patients’ rights.
The outside group Indivisible said Democrats should hold their own town halls — and if Dems don’t, they’ll hold their own.
The Waves also discusses the Riverside Church controversy and the case of Sarah Milov.
What we say matters, especially depending on whom we say it to.
The Waves also discusses the case against Jeffrey Epstein and Taffy Brodesser-Akner’s Fleishman Is in Trouble.
Trump imposing new tariffs on top of broader policy uncertainty will mean a hit to growth. The question is how large of a hit it will ultimately be.
Lina Khan and her allies tried to remake antitrust law. Trump’s team is likely putting an end to that.
Look for a more emboldened president compared to the Trump of 2017.
Such challenges are the backdrop to the annual session of China’s parliament.
Nicaragua announced last week it is withdrawing from the United Nations Human Rights Council, following a U.N. report that slammed the government’s human rights violations and warned the country was becoming an authoritarian state. The report by a panel of independent human rights experts adds to international pressure on the Nicaraguan government led by President Daniel Ortega and first lady Rosario Murillo, who was recently named co-president.
Republicans in Congress are pushing forward budget plans that would cut trillions in federal spending and give trillions more in tax cuts that disproportionately benefit corporations and the ultra-rich. This week, hundreds of faith leaders gathered on the Christian holy day of Ash Wednesday on Capitol Hill to voice their opposition.
We speak with Democratic Congressmember Al Green of Texas a day after he was censured by the House of Representatives for disrupting President Donald Trump’s joint address to Congress on Tuesday night. His dramatic protest came near the start of Trump’s record-long speech. In instantly iconic images, Green rose and shook his walking cane at the president on the rostrum, telling him “You have no mandate” to cut vital government programs. Green was ejected from the chamber.
Amid ongoing chaos and outrage stemming from the Trump administration’s gutting of the U.S. Agency for International Development, we hear a critique of USAID and the “humanitarian-industrial complex” from South African anthropologist Kathryn Mathers. ”USAID is very much a part of a system and industry that not only depends on global inequality … but in many ways produces it,” she says.
“I hate to predict things like that,” Trump said when pressed about the possibility of a recession during a recorded interview that aired on “Sunday Morning Futures with Maria Bartiromo.
Lady Gaga made her name bringing a touch of strangeness to whatever she does, and on Saturday Night Live last night, where she played the host and musical guest, she delivered with over-the-top costumes and theatrical choreography in performances of songs off her new album, Mayhem.
For the two musical interludes, Gaga was at her most exacting and confrontational.
Four floors up, I’d look up from my work and cherish
the little arc of calm I felt from time to time.
I liked a drink, and to pose myself a problem
I could not always solve.
Now and again,
I’d bite into a lemon, to clear my head.
The acid was like a hook in my mouth: It was so sour,
I thought it must be good.
*
The one with the sewn-up face, he gave me
an electric feeling.
I got a little belly from all our drinking, and cooked meats
tasted distressingly of animal.
