Padres center fielder Jackson Merrill made a valiant effort to bring back the home run. But after leaping and stretching his entire torso over the top of the wall, the ball fell just out of his reach.

Ohtani, hitting while pitching for the first time in almost four weeks, had homered on the first pitch of the game.

Manager Dave Roberts has held Ohtani out of the batting order for each of his last three starts on the mound, in what’s become a start-by-start decision. But Wednesday, he handled pitching and hitting duties, with immediate positive feedback.

“Obviously it’s a big series, and with the way he’s swinging the bat, I feel it gives us the best chance to win,” Roberts said before the game. “And last week, giving him a couple days off to reset, I thought that was beneficial. We’re on the heels of an off day [Thursday]. So I think all that in total, it just made sense to have him hit today.”

Roberts has also witnessed a “recharged” Ohtani on this trip, as evident on the basepaths and in the batter’s box.

Roberts and Ohtani differ in how much they credit his offensive turnaround to the two-day break from hitting that Roberts gave the two-way phenom last week, versus the progress he was already showing. But Ohtani entered Wednesday with four doubles and 10 hits total in five games against the Angels and Padres.

“I think he’s getting there,” Roberts said before the game. “I wouldn’t say he’s back; I think he’s getting there.”

The post Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani hits leadoff homer against Padres before taking the mound appeared first on Los Angeles Times.

“If you were not born in America, you should not hold power in our government. End of story,” Mace posted to X on Wednesday, clarifying her legislation.

Naturalized citizens are ineligible for the presidency, but can run for any office below that provided they have held citizenship for a minimum amount of time; for example, anyone who has been a citizen for over nine years is eligible to run for U.S. Senate.

However, Rep. Delia Ramirez (D-IL) had a simple reminder for Mace when asked about the legislation: it’s not just Democrats who elect naturalized citizens to office.

“What do you make of this bill from Nancy Mace — this xenophobic ‘born in the USA’ bill?” asked Meidas Touch’s Pablo Manriquez.

“Nancy Mace is a racist, unstable individual who should not be taken seriously,” Ramirez replied. “I find it fascinating that she is coming after members on the Democratic side, and I think she forgot that she has a number of Republicans who were also not born here. I would be interested to know what Carlos Giménez and others think about it” — referring to a Florida GOP lawmaker who was born in Cuba.

Mace is running in a crowded primary for governor of South Carolina — to the chagrin of some of President Donald Trump’s loyalists, who have found her to be an unreliable loose cannon on some issues.

The post Nancy Mace gets brutal reminder from colleague as she pushes ‘born in the USA’ bill appeared first on Raw Story.

“Her husband votes against me all the time,” Trump said about Jacqui Heinrich and Rep. Brian Fitzpatrick (R-PA) while speaking to a press gaggle on Wednesday. “Can you imagine? I don’t know what’s with him. You better ask him what’s with him. He likes voting against Trump. You know what happens with that? It doesn’t work out well.”

Trump was likely referring to his role as kingmaker. The Republican candidates that Trump has endorsed have gone on to win recent primary elections, and he usually backs the opponents of GOP lawmakers who refuse to do his bidding.

The reaction on X took issue with Trump’s remarks, though. The X account for The Intellectualist, a Substack account, called it “morally repulsive.”

Jonathan Tamari, a senior Washington correspondent for Bloomberg, pointed out that “the PA primary was last night. Fitzpatrick is in the clear for a challenge from the right,” but “being attacked by Trump for not being totally loyal is actually a very good message for him in the general election.”

Jake Sherman, the founder of Punchbowl News, noted that “Fitzpatrick represents a district that voted for Kamala Harris and broadly supports Democrats in nearly every election. Yet Fitzpatrick keeps winning.”

Trump has gone after Heinrich before, and others online noted his history with Fitzpatrick.

“Trump attacked Brian Fitzpatrick’s beloved late brother last year, attacked his wife several times, and is now attacking him,” freelance political reporter Nick Field recalled. “Not a lot of gratitude for Fitzpatrick supporting him through the January 6th aftermath and voting against his impeachment.”

The post Trump’s ‘morally repulsive’ taunt of Fox News reporter and her fiancé draws backlash appeared first on Raw Story.

“I’ve told everybody, I’ve had Botox,” she said on yesterday’s episode of the “Behind the Table” podcast.

She added, “I do work on myself,” and noted that she’s “had Restylane to fill in” certain spots on her face.

As for her hair, the “View” co-host confessed that “just yesterday, I had a dye job, a highlight job and a keratin treatment.”

Behar added, “Look how stunning the hair looks!” while admitting she’s not a “natural redhead” to executive producer Brian Teta.

But the longtime TV personality, 83, insisted she hadn’t done more to improve her looks. “Everybody thinks I’ve had a facelift. I have not had a facelift,” she said.

She also confessed that having a polished appearance doesn’t come without significant maintenance.

“You have to do things” to maintain a youthful appearance, she told Teta, noting that “everybody thinks you look good because you’re naturally that good — you’re not.”

Elsewhere in the interview, Behar joked that she needed to “go get a mani-pedi. Talk about maintenance!”

When Teta suggested that some people think men perhaps “age better,” the outspoken talk show host pushed back.

“Men do not age better!” she exclaimed. “When they start with the Botox and the eyelid surgery and the hair dye, they look ridiculous!”

Behar shared that in her opinion, “they’re better off just aging gracefully,” and that they have the “advantage” of being told they have a “distinguished look” as they age.

The ABC star is nowhere near the only celebrity to divulge their list of cosmetic enhancements. Many other A-listers, including Ariana Madix, have recently broken down which ones they’ve indulged in.

In a May 2025 interview, the “Love Island USA” host divulged to Page Sixthat she’d just had her first laser treatment, and that she gets Botox “every six months or so.”

Lisa Rinna’s model daughter Amelia Gray Hamlin also shared her cosmetic procedures in a January interview with Variety that she’s “doing this thing right now called SkinVive, which is a moisturizer injection, not a filler.”

Per the outlet, the 24-year old Victoria’s Secret model has been “open” about a rhinoplasty procedure. She’s also spoken out in the past about having a breast reduction to prevent sepsis due to a nipple ring.

Meanwhile, Martha Stewart, 84, denied having plastic surgery in a January interview with People.

“Everybody insists that I’ve had plastic surgery and I have not ever had plastic surgery,” the Elm Biosciences maven told the outlet at the time.  

“I’m the most honest person on earth — but if they won’t take my word for it, I don’t know.”

The post Joy Behar shares cosmetic procedures she’s had done — and the 1 thing she insists she hasn’t appeared first on Page Six.

Not longtime politician Karen Bass.

Asked this week why she’d failed to meet her own goal of ending the scourge of homelessness in her first term, she replied:

“I didn’t anticipate some of the bureaucratic barriers that I would experience, but I am prepared to take those on now.” 

Well. 

Bass, a former state assemblywoman and member of Congress, had served in elected government for 18 years prior to taking the mayor’s seat.

Yet she didn’t anticipate bureaucracy in a sprawling metropolis like LA? 

That’s odd.

But even if she flubbed or exaggerated her expectations, isn’t it the job of elected officials to navigate –– and, one might dare hope, reduce –– the hurdles of bureaucracy?

Per the city-led annual count required by the US government, 43,695 people remain homeless in LA as of the 2025 count (the most recent available) –– including 26,972 living on the streets.

That’s well north of zero, the goal Bass shared when when she took office in 2023.

The problem, of course, is not bureaucracy but city policy, set by the mayor and 15-member City Council. 

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That policy –– an epic fail –– centers on revolving-door programs such as rolling out laundry trucks for the homeless, “supervising” areas where people sleep in cars, and stashing some in hotel rooms at a cost of $226 per room per night.

Last year, LA taxpayers spent more than $400 million on homelessness. 

But just 10% of that went toward getting people off the streets for good, The California Post has reported.

Instead: Bass & Co. offer a doom loop that entrenches homelessness while enriching nonprofits, hotels, developers, and other stakeholders in the homeless industrial complex.

To make meaningful change, the city will need to course-correct and address the primary causes of homelessness: addiction and mental illness.

Blaming bureaucracy –– while ignoring hard reality –– offers a case study in how to look weak.

Bass did assure voters that she’s now prepared to confront the twin scourges of homelessness and bureaucracy. 

Should they believe her this time, or are her expectations amiss again?

The post Longtime politician Karen Bass derailed by ‘bureaucratic barriers’ appeared first on New York Post.

The Wall Street Journal’s editorial board argued on Wednesday that Trump’s continued threats are not being taken seriously by the Iranian regime. They cited his threat to resume a bombing campaign in the country this week if Iran didn’t come back to the negotiating table with a serious proposal to end the conflict.

“Such threats have been repeated so often that they now face diminishing returns,” the editorial reads in part. “Iran doesn’t seem to believe them, and in any case, the regime seems prepared to ride out further conflict and fight back by targeting the Gulf allies and commercial shipping.”

The war in Iran has gone on for nearly three months and has been a disaster for the global economy. Iran wrested control of the Strait of Hormuz, a critical global waterway that accounts for 20% of global energy trade, in retaliation for the war. That move has sent global energy prices skyrocketing, with the average price of gasoline in the U.S. reaching its highest point in more than four years.

That leaves Trump with few options, and none of them are good, according to the WSJ editors. For instance, they said Trump could resume military strikes, even though the end goal is yet to be defined. Trump could also continue the U.S. blockade of the Strait of Hormuz and put together a military escort for ships leaving the waterway. The editors also suggested Trump could destroy Iran’s energy infrastructure.

“All of this carries risks, both military and economic,” they wrote. “But by now the President has no options that don’t include risks.”

They warned that the longer the war goes on, the greater the political risk it poses for Trump and the GOP heading into the midterms.

“As Mr. Trump famously said in criticizing his predecessors, the U.S. shouldn’t start a war if it isn’t prepared to do what it takes to win,” the WSJ editors wrote.

The post Trump getting ‘diminishing returns’ because he doesn’t have what it takes to end war: WSJ appeared first on Raw Story.

Enrique Tarrio, the former Proud Boys leader sentenced to 22 years for seditious conspiracy for his role in planning the Capitol attack, told Reuters he plans to apply, estimating he deserves between $2 and $5 million.

“I’m not greedy,” Tarrio said. “But my life was all [expletive] up because of this.”

Peter Ticktin, an attorney representing more than 400 Jan. 6 defendants, warned the fund may not stretch far enough.

“People lost multi-million dollar businesses while they were locked up,” he said. “I don’t think the DOJ is ready for us ⁠yet.”

Trump seemed to agree.

“You’re talking about peanuts,” he told reporters at Joint Base Andrews. “It destroyed the lives of many, many people.”

Even some who attacked police officers expect a cut. Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche refused to rule out payouts to rioters who assaulted officers, and Tarrio endorsed that position.

“The Justice Department over-prosecuted for political gain,” he said. “So everyone deserves to get money.”

The fund has drawn a lawsuit from two Capitol Police officers who called it “the most brazen act of presidential corruption this century.” Democrats and some Republicans have questioned its legality, while critics noted the settlement also permanently bars the IRS from auditing Trump, his family, and his businesses.

Perhaps most remarkably, former FBI Director James Comey — twice indicted by Trump’s DOJ — said he’s considering applying too.

“It’s to compensate people who’ve been targeted by the Justice Department for, they say, ⁠personal, political or ideological reasons,” Comey told CNN. “So I’m guessing I’ll be in line.”

The post Ex-Proud Boys leader convicted of sedition now eyes $5M payout from Trump’s fund appeared first on Raw Story.

As of December, SpaceX had set aside $530 million for potential litigation losses, some of which could stem from ongoing complaints filed against its AI unit over sexualized imagery generated by its Grok chatbot.

The disclosures show how SpaceX took on new financial and reputational risks when it acquired Elon Musk’s artificial intelligence startup xAI in February, a deal which sent the rocket maker’s private valuation soaring to over $1 trillion. In the filing, SpaceX repeatedly claims that xAI’s mission is to develop “truth-seeking artificial intelligence.” In practice, that has often meant launching AI features with minimal guardrails. While Grok’s free-wheeling nature is often framed by Musk as a selling point, it has landed xAI in hot water with regulators.

Disclosing potential business risks is a routine and legally required part of IPO filings, and some of the concerns outlined by SpaceX may never materialize. The company is one of a number of chatbot makers that is being scrutinized by regulators as governments grapple with the societal impacts of generative AI tools.

SpaceX disclosed in the filing that it is currently under investigation in the United States and other countries over allegations that Grok was used to create sexualized imagery of apparent minors. The company also noted that it’s the defendant in several ongoing class action lawsuits, and that future “misuse” of its AI products could expose it to more regulatory sanctions, “including loss of access to certain markets, which has occurred in the past.”

Some of SpaceX’s AI products, including Grok’s Spicy and Unhinged modes, are “designed to generate more candid, direct, or less reserved or irreverent outputs,” notes the filing. “Because these modes may be more irreverent and harsher than our standard offerings, they present heightened risks, including reputational harm, the generation of potentially explicit content and misinformation or deceptive outputs, potential nonconsensual or exploitative imagery, intellectual property infringement, or content that could be viewed as exploitative, harmful, harassing, abusive, or discriminatory.”

SpaceX also disclosed to investors that Grok and X have about 550 million combined monthly users as of March 31, according to the filing. Of those, 117 million use Grok’s AI features each month. In comparison, OpenAI says ChatGPT has more than 900 million weekly users.

Whether the risks posed by Grok and X are worth the headache may be one of the significant questions investors will have to wrestle with ahead of the SpaceX IPO. Earlier this week, a group of nonprofits warned that xAI’s poor safety record could become a liability for SpaceX investors.

SpaceX’s AI unit, which includes X and xAI, is a drag on the rest of the company, with an operating loss of more than $6.3 billion last year. Sales of ads, data, and subscriptions are growing, but not at a pace that would quickly turn the division profitable. One bright spot for SpaceX’s AI efforts is its deal with Anthropic, which has agreed to pay $15 billion a year for access to the company’s data centers.

The AI division’s revenue rose to $3.2 billion in 2025, up about 22 percent from the year before. SpaceX attributed part of the surge to increased sales of ads on X. But in this year’s first quarter, ad sales plummeted by $100 million. The company described the drop as a temporary issue caused by an overhaul of its advertiser tools.

The company’s services business is faring better. Revenue from subscriptions to Grok and X jumped by $365 million last year and $177 million in just the first three months of this year. SpaceX did not disclose the number of subscribers to each of the services. In the US, Grok starts at $10 monthly and X Premium at $3 monthly.

The post SpaceX Listed Grok’s ‘Spicy’ Mode as a Risk in Its IPO Filing appeared first on Wired.

CNN’s Paula Reid asked Blanche in an interview whether people who were convicted of hurting police during the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection would be eligible for a payout from the newly created $1.776 fund the Department of Justice created as part of a settlement with President Donald Trump. The fund is meant to compensate people who claim they were wrongly prosecuted under former President Joe Biden’s administration. It has also raised concerns that the money could be funneled to Trump’s allies.

“Just to be clear, people who hurt police get money all the time,” Blanche said during the interview. “There is a process, where if you believe your rights were violated, you can apply for funds, you can file a claim, you can sue, you can go to court.”

Blanche’s comments come at a time when the Trump administration is facing significant criticism for appearing to flout federal conflict-of-interest laws. The settlement struck between the Trump DOJ and the IRS, both of which are executive agencies that Trump oversees, also included a stipulation that prevents the IRS from auditing Trump, his family members, and entities tied to the Trumps.

Political analysts and observers reacted to Blanche’s interview on social media.

“Wow,” Jim Stewartson, a writer and political commentator, posted on X. “We should find all these cop killers who are getting paid for it and do something about it. That seems something like an Attorney General would do, as opposed to seeking out cop killers to pay because they wore a red hat when they did it.”

“This is the most pro-crime administration in a generation. Not turning a blind eye to crime, but embracing it, defending it, and rewarding it,” journalist Pedro L. Gonzalez posted on X.

“Republicans got FURIOUS when they (falsely) claimed Democrats wanted to ‘defund the police,’” Hemant Mehta, a former “Jeopardy!” champion, posted on X. “They won’t say a word about Trump’s personal lawyer endorsing a bounty for physically beating cops.”

CNN: Would you be okay with people who were convicted of hurting police, getting taxpayer money? Blanche: Just to be clear, people that hurt police get money all the time. pic.twitter.com/xo138c0Wq6 — Acyn (@Acyn) May 20, 2026

The post ‘Wow’: Todd Blanche leaves onlookers flabbergasted with CNN interview answer appeared first on Raw Story.

A source tells Page Six that Zoë Kravitz and Harry Styles are thinking of having “a small wedding” in front of just family and close friends “in the UK around Christmastime.”

The “Big Little Lies” actress and the “Watermelon Sugar” singer have spent time together in London throughout their romance.

The couple was first linked in August 2025 when they were spotted together in Rome. The following month, they were photographed grabbing each other’s butts during a PDA-heavy outing in the Italian capital city.

It was previously reported by the UK Mirror that the “High Fidelity” star spent last Christmas with the One Direction alum in his English hometown of Cheshire.

Styles moved to Rome during a two-year break after his Love On Tour wrapped up in July 2023 and the private pair have been growing their relationship while abroad.

Page Six exclusively reported the couple were engaged in April, with a source telling us the Grammy winner “is completely smitten” and that he “would jump off a cliff for” Kravitz.

The “Blink Twice” director, we were told, was “on cloud nine.”

Kravitz was spotted flaunting her engagement ring this week at the opening night of Styles’ Together Together Tour in Amsterdam. The tour includes a 30-night residency at Madison Square Garden in New York City later this year.

Sources previously told Page Six that Kravitz and Styles were thinking about two weddings: one in NYC and one across the pond.

“I know for a fact Zoë would want to do something in New York because of her dad, so if anything it’s going to be two weddings,” a source close to the Kravitz family told Page Six earlier this month, referring to her rock star dad, Lenny.

“Dad still lives in downtown [Manhattan]. It could be at the Fouquet’s Hotel. If she does two [weddings] it would be one in London and one in New York.”

Kravitz was previously married Karl Glusman. Their 2019 wedding took place at her father’s Paris home in front of a star-studded guest list including her “Big Little Lies” co-stars Reese Witherspoon, Shailene Woodley and Laura Dern, among others. The couple finalized their divorce in 2021.

Kravitz got engaged to Channing Tatum in 2023, but they broke up the following year.

This will be Style’s first marriage.

He was previously linked to Taylor Swift, Kendall Jenner, Olivia Wilde, Emily Ratajkowski and Olivia Dean, to name a few.

The post Zoë Kravitz and Harry Styles eyeing winter wedding: source appeared first on Page Six.

“Any claim that I had knowledge of this scheme is flat-out false,” the Minnesota congresswoman said in a written statement to Fox News Digital on Wednesday.

“The MEALS Act was signed into law by President Trump and passed with bipartisan support as part of a broader legislative package. Trump’s USDA Secretary set the regulatory framework during the rollout of the program. I have always championed feeding kids and will continue to ensure our children do not go hungry.”

Omar went on to say that the “moment this fraud came to light” she “immediately sent a letter to the USDA Secretary demanding answers and accountability.”

“As I stated from the beginning, stealing millions of dollars under the guise of feeding hungry children to bankroll lavish lifestyles and extravagant expenses is reprehensible,” Omar said. “I’m grateful that Aimee Bock and every individual involved in this abhorrent scheme are being held accountable for defrauding taxpayers and betraying vulnerable children.”

Omar’s comment comes after she faced mounting pressure to explain her knowledge of and connections to the scandal that cost taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars.

The Minnesota House Fraud Prevention and State Agency Oversight Committee invited Omar to testify about what she knew but says she never responded, which prompted an effort to subpoena information from her. That effort was blocked by Democrats on the committee.

Just last week, the committee released its final report that accused Gov. Tim Walz’s administration of fostering a “culture of tolerance” that allowed fraudsters to steal billions in taxpayer dollars overall.

The report offered a strong critique of Omar, asserting that her MEALS Act, implemented into the Families First Coronavirus Response Act, “took the guardrails off” federal nutrition programs by allowing for-profit restaurants to participate and permitting “grab-and-go” flexibilities that made it nearly impossible to verify if children were actually being fed by the Feeding Our Future program.

Here’s the latest on the Minnesota fraud scheme:

• DOJ surging prosecutors to Minnesota to bring fraudsters to justice – Bondi vows ‘severe consequences’ for those convicted
• Somali ambassador to UN is linked to shady health care company in Medicaid fraud scandal: HHS official
• Tim Walz abruptly drops out of Minnesota governor’s race in wake of billion-dollar fraud scandal
• Somali fraudsters got luxury digs, beachside resort, rented Rolls Royce and Lamborghini with stolen funds

The committee’s Republican chair, state Rep. Kristin Robbins, has suggested that Congress should take action to enforce the subpoena and get more answers about questions related to Omar’s alleged association with convicted fraudsters, her public promotion of a Minneapolis restaurant that later became linked to the program, along with communication and meeting records with the Minnesota Department of Education and constituents.

“She only sent a letter once the fraud was exposed,” Robbins told Fox News Digital in response to Omar’s statement.

“Prior to that, she sent letters urging the administration to keep the waivers in place — allowing the fraud to continue. Sounds like revisionist history. I don’t buy it at all.”

Earlier this month, Fox News Digital reported that a former Omar staffer sent an email to the committee also pointing to Trump’s USDA during his first term and downplaying the potential negative impact of Omar’s MEALS Act legislation.

Fox News Digital reached out to the White House and USDA for comment.

The post Rep. Ilhan Omar calls alleged ties to Minnesota daycare fraud scandal ‘flat out false’ appeared first on New York Post.

It’s the latest in a string of polls agreeing Trump is at or near a low point with voters, with even a significant fraction of Republicans turning on him in recent surveys.

The latest Fox-sponsored numbers drew a swift reaction from political observers on social media, who agreed it spelled potential disaster for Republicans in this fall’s midterms without swift improvement.

“Devastating numbers for Trump, as the latest Fox News poll shows Americans prefer Sleepy Joe’s economy,” said politics writer Nick Field.

“Wow. Whopping new poll from Fox News has a inflation at a 76% disapproval level and the overall economy at 71%!” wrote Chamber of Progress director of economic analysis Tahra Hoops. “No matter which poll you look at, the numbers are consistent. Americans do not like this economy or these high prices.”

“Trump is 52 points underwater on inflation, which just happens to be the most important issue in the election by far,” wrote author and Pod Save America co-host Dan Pfeiffer. “But hey, at least Trump unseated a GOPer in a district he won by 30 points.”

“The inflation number. Holy [expletive],” wrote analyst Chris Cillizza.

“I’ve been cautious but the preponderance of higher quality pollsters is hard to ignore: he’s the most unpopular he’s ever been,” wrote political newsletter writer Steve Morris.

The post ‘Devastating’: Analysts stunned by ‘whopping new poll’ for Trump — from Fox News appeared first on Raw Story.

The SpaceX board granted Musk one billion restricted shares of Class B common stock on top of his existing stake of roughly 5 billion shares, worth roughly $700 billion at the expected IPO valuation of $1.75 trillion.

The new shares, potentially worth an additional $600 billion or more, only vest if SpaceX hits two conditions: its top market capitalization milestone of $7.5 trillion, and the creation of a permanent human colony on Mars with at least one million inhabitants.

The prospectus answers a question on Wall Street’s mind: why SpaceX is going public this way at all. Three months before filing, Musk merged his AI company xAI and his social media platform X into SpaceX, in a deal that valued the rocket company at $1 trillion and the AI company at $250 billion. That merged company, set to rock public markets next month, seemed Frankenstein-ish, but the filing’s own mission statement shows that the seemingly mismatched parts have a single purpose. “For the entirety of its existence,” the filing reads, “human civilization has lived on a single celestial body: Earth. The current paradigm, in which human civilization is confined to one planet, exposes humanity to existential threats that are unpredictable and uncontrollable on a planetary scale.” A few sentences later, it adds: “We do not want humans to have the same fate as dinosaurs.”

SpaceX is a Mars company, and everything else is built as infrastructure for the trip.

Mars colonization, the goal Musk has chased since he was a boy reading Asimov, requires much more than rockets. It requires robots—to build habitats, carry out agriculture, produce fuel, and build all the infrastructure needed to keep humans alive in an environment that’s trying to kill them. It requires the robots to run on AI that can operate on Mars itself, since there’s a communications lag with Earth. And it requires enormous amounts of capital, since none of this technology exists yet.

The merger gave Musk all three pieces under one roof. xAI on its own, loaded down with debt, could not raise the capital to build the AI infrastructure that such a colony would require. SpaceX on its own had no AI business. The idea, as the filing shows, is that the new company can use Starlink’s revenue plus SpaceX’s launch business to subsidize the AI buildout, and use xAI’s technology to make Mars actually governable at scale.

Who will pay for the rest of it? That’s what the IPO is for. SpaceX’s launch business doesn’t seem to need public capital, with Starlink alone generating more than $11 billion in revenue last year. But the Mars-supply-stack as a whole needs more money than even a profitable rocket company can produce. Public capital has to fund this layer: the Starship production scale-up needed to move what would be millions of tons of cargo to Mars and to produce the orbital AI compute satellites SpaceX says it will begin deploying as early as 2028. The S-1 hints at this throughout, including a stated goal of deploying space-based AI data centers powered by the sun starting in 2028.

SpaceX claims that for this suite of technologies, there’s a total addressable market of $28.5 trillion, roughly the current size of the U.S. economy. Of that, $26.5 trillion sits in AI. The space and connectivity businesses most people generally associate with the company account for less than $2 trillion combined.

Whether public market investors have an appetite for funding something this risky is a separate question. The Mars timeline is estimated on a range from multi-decades to never.

Paul Sutter, a NASA advisor and Johns Hopkins research scientist, wrote in Scientific Americanthat Musk’s Mars timeline doesn’t correspond to a real plan. “It’s like announcing a camping trip on your next available weekend,” Sutter wrote, “without having purchased any camping supplies. And your car is in the shop. And has exploded.”

Plus, the combined company posted a $4.3 billion net loss in the first quarter alone, according to the filing. The drag came almost entirely from xAI, which was folded into SpaceX in the February merger. The AI segment generated $818 million in revenue but lost $2.5 billion on operations, while spending $7.7 billion on capital expenditures—mostly Nvidia GPUs, which the company leased from its own board member. Plus if you add a $1.9 billion accounting charge from paying off xAI’s old debt early, then the bulk of the net loss is SpaceX absorbing xAI’s balance sheet. Starlink and the launch business stayed profitable.

The prospectus opens with an epigraph from Musk himself, set above the corporate mission statement:

“You want to wake up in the morning and think the future is going to be great—and that’s what being a space-faring civilization is all about. It’s about believing in the future and thinking that the future will be better than the past,” he wrote. “And I can’t think of anything more exciting than going out there and being among the stars.”

The post Elon Musk’s proposed pay package in SpaceX’s IPO filing reveals what the company actually is: a $1 trillion monster built to colonize Mars appeared first on Fortune.

“I hate good-looking men,” Trump said as a cadet greeted him on stage, the Times reported. “I like to see what these guys are like!”

Speaking for nearly an hour, Trump boasted that he also delivered the prestigious military academy’s commencement speech in 2017, according to the report.

“I’m thrilled to become the first president to ever give a second keynote address to this storied institution,” Trump said, even though Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama all have the same distinction,” the Times noted. Still, Trump said, “I’m very proud of that honor.”

Trump appeared to repeat a line from the last time he gave the commencement speech, the report pointed out.

On Wednesday, he told cadets, “Whatever danger comes our way, you will fight, fight, fight,” which was similar to his 2017 line, “You have to put your head down and fight, fight, fight,” the Times reported.

As cadets came up to shake his hand on stage, Trump couldn’t help but comment on how they looked.

“Look at the muscles on this guy,” he said, according to the report. When he saw a female cadet, Trump remarked, “If I didn’t invite her up, they’d accuse me of discrimination.”

The report noted that on Trump’s first day back in office, his administration fired U.S. Coast Guard Adm. Linda L. Fagan, the first female officer to lead a U.S. military branch.

Trump veered into talking about the war in Iran and touted the destruction there.

“Everything’s gone. Their navy’s gone. Their air force is gone, just about everything,” Trump said. “The only question is, do we go and finish it up, or are they going to be signing a document? Let’s see what happens.”

The president then said he would like to return and deliver the commencement speech again.

“We’re going to have to try it maybe a third time, too, to keep that record intact,” he said, according to the report.

The post ‘I hate good-looking men’: Trump’s Coast Guard speech goes off the rails appeared first on Raw Story.

NPR spoke to a Trump voter on Tuesday who claimed that he and his partner had started fasting in order to save money on groceries. The comments came at a time when the Trump administration’s economic figures showed a sharp rise in inflation due to the war in Iran. Grocery prices were up nearly 3% while prices for food outside of the home increased by 3.6%, according to the data.

Burnett reacted to the Trump voter’s admission on her show, “OutFront.”

“It’s stunning,” she said about the voter’s fasting comments. “I can’t stop thinking about it, that fasting is the solution.”

Trump administration officials have been roundly criticized for offering some outlandish ways for Americans to save money on food costs. For instance, USDA Secretary Brooke Rollins told Americans that it only costs about $3 to eat “a piece of chicken, a piece of broccoli, a corn tortilla, and one other thing,” The New Republic reported in January.

The Trump administration has also proposed allowing slaughterhouses to kill animals faster in order to lower costs, USA Today reported.

The post Erin Burnett’s jaw drops at Trump voter’s admission on CNN: ‘Can’t stop thinking about it’ appeared first on Raw Story.

His pioneering rocket company SpaceX filed Wednesday for what’s expected to be the largest initial public offering in history, potentially raising at least $75 billion and valuing the company at well over $1 trillion.

The registration statement with the Securities and Exchange Commission for an expected public offering next month explicitly sets aside stocks for retail investors, though the exact number will be spelled out in a later filing, as will the offering price and company valuation.

Interest in the stock offering is expected to be high despite the billionaire’s controversial politics, including his involvement last year with the Department of Government Efficiency, the makeshift cost-cutting effort that resulted in the loss of hundreds of thousands of government jobs.

“Potential investors, are probably just as polarized as the electorate is, too, given his dabbling in politics,” said Carol Schleif, chief market strategist, for BMO Private Wealth. “But it’s not just the SpaceX IPO per se, it’s a bigger, broader excitement among investors for space investment in general.”

Investor interest was piqued by the Artemis moon mission earlier this year that SpaceX did not participate in, she said. However, the company is expected to play a larger role in future missions that land astronauts to the moon by ferrying them there in its massive Starship rocket under development.

Ultimately, Musk wants to establish a colony on Mars but those plans have been set on the back burner, with NASA now focusing on moon missions.

Founded in 2002 in El Segundo, SpaceX has revolutionized the aerospace industy by developing the reusable Falcon 9 rocket that has radically lowered launch costs.

The company moved its headquarters from Hawthorne to Texas in 2024. However, SpaceX retains large operations in the South Bay city and blasts off regularly from Vandenberg Space Force Base in Santa Barbara County.

Since developing its reusable rocket technology, SpaceX has established its Starlink network as the leading satellite-based broadband internet service. It also is moving into satellite-based cellular service and last year merged with Musk’s xAi artificial intelligence company that also included his X social network.

The regulatory filing claims that the market for its rocket, internet and mobile telephone businesses could be as large as $28.5 trillion. The company also plans to send orbiting data centers powered by the sun that would perform AI calculations.

With the company making massive capital investments, it recorded a $4.28-billion loss in the first quarter.

The public offering is expected to hit the market next month after a “road show” during which SpaceX will seek to drum up interest from both institutional and retail investors.

It will arrive after a fairly quiet year for IPOs that was brightened last week when Cerebras Systems, a Sunnyvale company that makes semiconductors for AI supercomputers, went public.

Shares at Cerebras were offered at $185 and spiked 68% on its opening day. They closed Wednesday at $290.69.

Matt Kennedy, a senior strategist at Renaissance Capital, said the SpaceX offering would dwarf Cerebras, as it is expected to raise more than every IPO combined in the last two years.

“A win here or a loss could really impact the IPO market,” he said. “The sheer size of this deal is going to make or lose fortunes.”

The post SpaceX files to go public in huge IPO deal appeared first on Los Angeles Times.

The suspects are accused of participating in at least 20 home burglaries, making off with wallets, high-end handbags, watches, jewelry and more, according to the L.A. County district attorney’s office.

“These defendants are accused of prowling neighborhoods, smashing their way into homes and stealing from families who were left shaken and violated,” said Dist. Atty. Nathan Hochman in a statement.

Although organized burglary crews targeting residential homes is a longstanding problem in Los Angeles, there was an upswing in incidents in the San Fernando Valley and surrounding areas last month, with thieves striking nine homes in a one-week period alone. In response, L.A. Mayor Karen Bass directed the Los Angeles Police Department to increase patrols along Ventura Boulevard, a hotspot for burglaries.

L.A. County Sheriff Robert Luna said the recently arrested suspects conducted extensive research of properties and attempted to conceal their crimes using burner phones and cars rented under fraudulent identities.

Luna, at a news conference Wednesday, noted that organized burglary crews “are increasingly targeting affluent neighborhoods and often select homes near golf courses, parks and hiking trails and open space areas that provide easier access and escape routes.”

Last month, L.A. Police Chief Jim McDonnell said that many of these residential burglaries are tied to theft rings from South America as well as groups based in South L.A. He said crews use similar tools such as hidden cameras to determine when residents leave their homes, Wi-Fi jammers to disrupt home security systems and ladders to get inside homes through second-floor windows.

The LAPD, L.A. County Sheriff’s Department and Ventura County Sheriff’s Department worked collaboratively to apprehend the seven alleged thieves.

Byron Gonzálo Sáez Sotomayor is accused of burglarizing or attempting to burglarize 18 homes in the San Fernando Valley and West Los Angeles, often targeting multiple residences in a single evening, prosecutors said. He was arrested while allegedly fleeing from a burglary in the Beverlywood area on May 4.

The 27-year-old has pleaded not guilty to 15 counts of residential burglary, three counts of attempted residential burglary and one count of grand theft of a firearm. He is being held in lieu of $1.4-million bail and faces 26 years in state prison if convicted as charged.

Christopher Sanchez, 26, Owen Rivera-Chacon, 24, and Edisson Fabian Boyaca, 27, were arrested May 1 during a surveillance operation into the suspected burglary crew in Santa Clarita, prosecutors said. They have each been charged with one felony count of residential burglary, and Rivera-Chacon faces allegations of a prior-strike conviction for residential burglary.

They have all pleaded not guilty. If convicted as charged, Sanchez and Boyaca each face six years in state prison, while Rivera-Chacon faces 17 years in state prison.

The final three alleged thieves — identified as Wilmar Santiago Castelblanco-Robles, 20, Alan Rolando Rodriguez-Pulido, 34, and Cristian Rios-Cuadros, 24, — were arrested April 26 when neighbors saw Rios-Cuadros and Castelblanco-Robles breaking into a Burbank home and called police, prosecutors said. The pair fled on foot, police said, and were apprehended by officers, while Rodriguez-Pulido was arrested nearby while driving a suspected getaway vehicle.

They are each charged with one felony county of residential burglary and face six years in state prison if convicted as charged. Castelblanco-Robles and Rios-Cuadros pleaded not guilty, while Rodriguez-Pulido is scheduled for a mental competency hearing June 16.

“Residential burglaries strike at the heart of people’s sense of safety, and we are responding with precision, urgency, and coordination,” said McDonnell in a statement Wednesday. “The LAPD will continue to pursue organized burglary crews relentlessly until our neighborhoods are secure.”

Staff writers Rong-Gong Lin II and Salvador Hernandez contributed to this report.

The post They cased, they plotted, they struck, police say. But 7 Valley burglary suspects are nabbed appeared first on Los Angeles Times.

The speakers try to muscle through it in a way that you know is giving a gaggle of tech bro losers over at Twitter/X a giant boner as they probably think these old, deeply unpopular AI brain-rotted business idiots are just as heroic as any civil rights icon from the 1960s.

What’s hysterical about it isn’t that it’s happened once, but several times in the past week alone. Rather than take the stage and fight in the name of the younger generation that’s getting squeezed out in the name of a technology that they don’t want, that almost nobody wants, they fight for the tech and not the people. It’s all just so sad, so miserable.

As I was writing this, Drew Magary over at Defector published an essay about all this in which he said, “From what I can tell, these people are pitching AI solely on its future omnipresence, rather than its ability to actually do anything beneficial for everyday people.”

He is correct. So was Futurism’s Maggie Harrison Dupré when she wrote about the latest escalation in the disastrous incorporation of AI junk, this time into a college graduation ceremony, when the president of Glendale Community College near Phoenix, Arizona, was showered with boos when the AI voice reading out the names of graduating students went haywire, misattributing the announced names with the students taking the stage, and skipping several batches of names entirely.

In response to a school representative trying to smooth things over by basically telling complaining students to shut up because what really matters here isn’t your name being spoken as you cross a stage to grab a diploma, but rather the cool pictures you take with your loved ones on graduation day, Dupré wrote:

“A photo is a way to commemorate the moment; it’s not the moment itself. The moment itself is about having your achievement recognized, which — yes — involves hearing your name read out to a crowd as you receive your diploma, while people you love cheer for you from the stands.”

Again, extremely correct.

All of this got me wondering why older people are so enamored of AI. You see it constantly in the business world, as survey after survey has found that AI implementation in the workplace is a huge hit among bosses and is a giant, sloppy wet fart among workers. Anecdotally, just last night, I had to attend a boring business-y, very adult meeting in person, in which a Gen X attendee sitting next to me furiously ChatGPT’ed their way through the entire thing, seemingly unable to critically think about the subject matter on their own, having to rely on an AI chatbot’s “opinion” of the discussed topics before chiming in.

College Graduates Keep Booing AI, Which Feels Like a Pretty Clear Message

Old people love this crap, and young people really hate it.

Why?

All I have are theories.

One: I think a lot of older people are tired of working, tired of thinking, tired of putting in effort, and they love that there is this thing that can do it all for them.

Two: Boomers and Gen Xers love shiny new tech toys promoted by the rich business idiots that other rich business idiots have labeled as entrepreneurial titans who are changing our world. They have bought into the business genius mythos hook, line, and sinker. Likely because they all lived through the 1980s, in which the Reagan administration deified greedy, soulless business idiots who are all very good at making a fortune at our expense.

Three: A lot of these freaks have a fetish for optimization. It’s understandable, considering that optimization is the only thing America can do anymore. We don’t make things. We shunned creativity a long time ago. It’s a country that considers genuine, unique brilliance and entrepreneurial spirit as a thing only suckers and losers dabble in. Why put in all the hard work, effort, and risk required to make something new when you can just squeeze as much money from an old idea as you can, cutting as many corners as possible along the way, which is inevitably defined by these business idiots as firing as many people as possible?

There are probably more theories that explain this bizarre old business idiot’s fascination with AI, but writing this much about it has been a grim exercise. I’m going to move on with my day, so I’ll just leave it at this: the thing that fascinates me most about all these business idiots getting relentlessly booed at commencement speeches is how they act like they see something in AI that the rest of us don’t, and we’re just too stupid to get it.

It’s the other way around.

We get what it is. It’s a gigantic Find-and-Replace tool that identifies humans it can render redundant and replaces them with machines. We get that, we know that they get that, and they’re spitting in our faces as they try to make us think it’s anything other than that. They’re just putting lipstick on a pig, trying to make us think that the ancient idea of firing people to make their bottom lines look better is some kind of brilliant tech revolution.

The post Students Keep Booing AI During Commencement Speeches, and Honestly, They Might Be Right appeared first on VICE.

• SpaceX warned investors about the risk that Grok could generate “potential nonconsensual or exploitative imagery.”
• The company’s S-1 paperwork cited investigations into Grok “content representing children in sexualized contexts.”
• Elon Musk previously pushed back on claims that Grok created sexualized AI images of minors after public backlash.

Elon Musk bet big on “spicy” AI. Now, it’s officially a risk factor.

SpaceX acquired xAI three months before it filed its pre-IPO S-1 paperwork. That brought in-house xAI’s social media platform, consumer chatbot — and not-safe-for-work Grok AI features.

In the Wednesday filing, SpaceX said that such features could pose “heightened risks” and “reputational harm” because the Grok NSFW modes are “more irreverent and harsher than our standard offerings.”

The filing warned about the possible “generation of potentially explicit content,” as well as “potential nonconsensual or exploitative imagery” and content that infringes on intellectual property. Such content could also be viewed as “harmful, harassing, abusive, or discriminatory,” the S-1 read.

It’s standard practice for companies to flag potential risks to its business in its pre-IPO paperwork, including any ongoing investigations or lawsuits that could have a material impact.

In January, xAI faced backlash after Grok created non-consensual sexualized AI images of women, including minors. The images sparked public condemnations from government officials, policy changes, and lawsuits.

SpaceX referenced these lawsuits in the S-1 filing. The company is subject to “investigations and inquiries” in the US concerning “allegations that our AI products were used to create nonconsensual explicit images or content representing children in sexualized contexts, and similar matters,” it read.

“The Company and certain subsidiaries have been named as defendants in multiple lawsuits arising from Grok’s image-generation and editing features,” the S-1 reads.

SpaceX said it intends to “defend itself vigorously in these actions.” Elon Musk has previously pushed back on claims that Grok generated sexualized AI images of minors, stating in January that he was “not aware of any naked underage images generated by Grok.”

The company made changes to its Grok AI following the backlash, limiting image generation to paying customers.

The company also warned that it may be subject to “additional litigation in the future” surrounding such topics.

The company also framed Grok as “among the fastest-advancing frontier models relative to peers, including OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google.”

The SpaceX filing also referenced the Irish Data Protection Commission’s inquiry into the AI company.

“This inquiry involves the processing of personal data of European Union data subjects, including children, using generative AI functionality associated with the Grok model within the X platform,” the filing read.

XAI also produces a variety of AI companions, like its AI anime character, Ani. In the filing, SpaceX warned about an inquiry from the Federal Trade Commission about how AI companies “have evaluated the safety of their chatbots when acting as companions to children and teens.”

While SpaceX had doubled down on Grok’s “irreverent” AI offerings, its competitors have shied away. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman announced a push into “erotica for adults” in October; the plans are on hold.

Read the original article on Business Insider

The post SpaceX warns investors that Grok’s NSFW AI is risky business appeared first on Business Insider.

The fund, which was not authorized by Congress and not approved by the court overseeing his lawsuit, purports to be able to pay out money to any Trump ally who was a victim of “lawfare.” Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche has refused to rule out payouts to perpetrators of the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol.

“I am writing to you to express my urgent concern surrounding the announcement of a newly formed ‘Anti-Weaponization Fund,’ a plan to set up nearly $1.8 billion in funds to compensate victims of alleged lawfare,” wrote Fitzpatrick to Blanche, in a letter obtained by Punchbowl News’ Jake Sherman. “A massive discretionary fund, with no oversight or approval from Congress, represents a dangerous backsliding in the transparency of our institutions and our commitment to the American taxpayer.”

“The announcement from the Department of Justice on May 18, 2026, stated that the U.S. Department of Treasury will direct a payment of $1,776,000,000 to an account for the sole use by the Anti- Weaponization Fund,’” said Fitzpatrick. “I am requesting more information on where these funds are being diverted from and how they will be used by this Designated Account.”

Among the questions Fitzpatrick is demanding answers for are: where the funds are being diverted from, whether “individuals convicted of federal crimes or associated with acts of violence” are eligible, and whether there are “examples of previous administrations establishing discretionary compensation programs that are not authorized by Congress and do not have court approval or judicial oversight.”

Fitzpatrick, though a loyal Republican for years, sits in a battleground House district and has been one of Trump’s greatest critics from the GOP side. He has admitted he might leave the GOP and become an independent if Pennsylvania primary law weren’t so rigid.

The post First GOP lawmaker hits DOJ with formal demand over Trump’s fund to pay off allies appeared first on Raw Story.

This comes after widespread outrage about the fund, which was created as a so-called “settlement” after Trump dropped his $10 billion suit against his own IRS for failing to secure his tax information.

The money is meant to be paid out to pro-Trump individuals who supposedly were victims of “lawfare” investigations, potentially even including Jan. 6 rioters.

“The potential guardrails — which could come in multiple different forms — would place conditions on who’s eligible for a payout from the nearly $1.776 billion fund,” said the report. “Senate Republicans could include language on this issue as part of the base text of the still-unreleased bill. They could also introduce an amendment for the vote-a-rama in an effort to counteract an all-but-certain Democratic push to put Republicans on the spot over the issue.”

“Democrats especially want to prevent payouts for rioters who assaulted police officers during the Jan. 6 attack on the Capitol,” noted the report. “Senate Majority Leader John Thune said earlier this week that he’s ‘not a big fan’ of the fund, adding that he doesn’t see a purpose for it.”

Many of the broad strokes of how the fund would be set up and administered have not been revealed by the Justice Department, to the extent that even Republican lawmakers are demanding more details.

The post Senate GOP hatches plan to undercut Trump’s massive ‘anti-weaponization’ fund appeared first on Raw Story.

Trump shared the news in an Instagram post Wednesday. She shared that she’s working closely with her medical team on a treatment plan and had already undergone a procedure earlier this week.

“I am staying focused and hopeful while surrounded by the love and support of my family, my kids, and those closest to me,” she shared.

Trump, 48, thanked her followers for their kindness and support.

“I kindly ask for privacy as I focus on my health and recovery,” she concluded.

Her former sister-in-law Ivanka Trump shared her support for Vanessa, commenting, “Praying for your continued strength and a swift recovery. Love you mama.”

Vanessa was last publicly seen celebrating her daughter Kai’s high school graduation on Friday. Kai — the 19-year-old daughter of Vanessa and Donald Trump Jr. — enjoyed an intimate dinner at Blackbird restaurant in Naples, Florida with her parents.

Other attendees included President Trump’s 32-year-old daughter Tiffany and her husband, Michael Boulos, as well as Donald Jr.’s fiancée, Bettina Anderson.

Bettina, 39, and Vanessa hugged at one point and appeared friendly.

Trump shares five children — Kai, as well as Donald, 17, Tristan, 14, Spencer, 13, and Chloe, 11 — with her ex-husband. The two divorced in 2018 after 12 years of marriage.

Vanessa started dating Tiger Woods in late 2024. Woods was not at Kai’s graduation dinner but did attend her graduation ceremony at the Benjamin School in Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. The golfer was spotted in his Escalade and showed up at the ceremony 15 minutes late, then left about 20 minutes earlier than the rest of the attendees.

Vanessa has stood by Woods following his DUI arrestin March.

A source told People on Sunday the couple was “happy to see each other” after Woods, 50, returned home to Jupiter, Florida, following his six-week inpatient treatment program in Switzerland.

“They kept in touch while he was away,” a second insider shared. “Both of them have responsibilities outside of their personal lives and that factors [into] how much time they can spend together.”

A source told Page Six last month that Vanessa had no plans to ever leave Woods.

“He’s like the hottest bachelor of Palm Beach,” a source told us, adding, “He’s the biggest golfer in the world, and he’s a gazillionaire. There aren’t that many options.”

The post Vanessa Trump reveals breast cancer diagnosis appeared first on Page Six.

Several departments were gutted, including its sports, metro and books sections, as well as its foreign correspondents and photojournalists. The massive headcount reduction stunned the media industry, although the paper’s heavy financial losses were no secret.

Bezos sat down with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin, who bluntly asked, “The company laid off about 30 percent of its staff, and there are a lot of people out there who said, ‘Jeff’s super wealthy, he’s talked about this being a public trust, something that he bought early on, how much you care about that piece of it. Why lay people off? Why fire people? Why don’t you subsidize the business?”

“The Post needs to be a profitable enterprise that stands on its own two feet,” Bezos shot back. The Amazon founder is among the world’s richest men with an estimated net worth of around $270 billion, according to Forbes.

“But does it? Some people say it should be a trust,” Sorkin said.

“Let me tell you why. It’s a measure of its relevance. If people won’t pay for our product, it’s not a good enough product,” Bezos said.

“It would be like poetry without rhyming. It’s too easy,” Bezos added. “So, it’s got to be something that people will pay for, because that’s a signal. It’s a signal that we’re providing a relevant service.”

Bezos then pointed out that The New York Times, where Sorkin also serves as a financial columnist, makes “a ton of money.”

“You guys are doing very well financially, and you’re providing a service that people are willing to pay for. We can do that, too,” Bezos said.

“And guess what I told them when we were planning those layoffs. I didn’t pick who was going to get laid off or which departments. I said, ‘Follow the data,’” Bezos continued. “Follow the data, and I said there is one exception to this… don’t follow the data on investigative reporting.”

Bezos said the “heart of the Post is investigative reporting,” and suggested the unit will continue to thrive.

“Our newsroom today, after the layoffs, is still larger than when we did Watergate and the Pentagon Papers,” Bezos said. “The Post is going to continue to be an important institution, in fact, it’s going to be a more important institution because of this financial discipline.”

Bezos pointed to a recent Pulitzer Prize for Public Service, which is considered the most prestigious of awards. The Post won the 2026 edition for in-depth coverage of the Trump administration’s efforts to transform the federal government.

“It needs to be relevant to readers, it needs to stand on its own two feet,” Bezos said.

Sorkin also asked Bezos point-blank if he wanted to own the paper.

“Do you want to own it? And the reason I ask is you’ve talked about how you are, by default, to some degree a conflicted owner, given you own all of these other businesses,” the CNBC host asked.

“When I bought The Post, it was very unprofitable when I brought it. The newsroom was even smaller than it is today. We turned it around in two years, it was profitable for six years. I put all that money back in The Post and grew the newsroom, so we’ve shrunk it back some now. But we haven’t shrunk it back to what it was when I bought it,” Bezos responded.

He said the Post didn’t adapt, and the news environment has changed a lot over the years.

Bezos bought the Washington Post in 2013 for $250 million. The paper thrived during the first Trump administration, but it has struggled in recent years with subscriber losses and bruising layoffs.

Bezos took particular heat in 2024 when he yanked the liberal editorial board’s planned endorsement of Kamala Harris, shortly before her loss to President Donald Trump.

The post Jeff Bezos defends Washington Post layoffs, reveals why he refuses to subsidize unprofitable paper appeared first on New York Post.

About 6 in 10 Republicans approve of how Trump is handling the economy, according to the poll from the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. That’s down from about 8 in 10 in February, before the war began.

The poll comes as the Mideast war fuels higher gasoline prices, while the U.S. and Iran struggle to move toward a permanent ceasefire. Trump’s hold on the GOP remains strong, as he demonstrated Tuesday when his handpicked candidate defeated Rep. Thomas Massie, a critic of the president, in a primary election challenge. The findings highlight Trump’s continued strength within the Republican Party, even as economic frustration grows.

Ariel Gutierrez, a 55-year-old Republican in Wisconsin, usually requires his teenage children to pay for their own gas. But with spiking gas costs, he’s helping out his 15-year-old, who’s just learning to drive.

“The whole Iran issue has just exacerbated it,” he said. “Maybe we were seeing it in groceries before, but now — with this push on gas and travel and all that — that is how people want to live the leisure part of their lives … and it is directly impacting us there now. And yes, that is, I believe from Trump’s policies, not from his predecessors.”

Trump remains unpopular outside his base. Most Americans continue to disapprove of Trump’s approach to both Iran and foreign policy. His overall approval rating in the new poll stands at 37%, up slightly from 33% in April. Nearly all Democrats disapprove of his performance as president, as do about 7 in 10 independents.

The economy remains a struggle

About one-third of U.S. adults approve of how Trump is handling the economy. That’s in line with an AP-NORC poll conducted in late April, but down slightly from the start of his second term, when 40% of U.S. adults approved.

The economy was a strength for Trump in his first term, but he’s struggled with skepticism about his handling of the issue since his return to the White House last year, after repeatedly promising to bring prices down. His second-term economic approval has fallen among Republicans, in particular. While a majority, 63%, still approve, that’s down from 79% in February, a few weeks before the war with Iran began.

Richard Baumgartner, a 77-year-old Republican from Las Vegas, believes higher costs are a necessary side effect of the war, which he supports.

“Unfortunately, because of the war, the economy is a little bit off-kilter,” Baumgartner said. “I think it’ll fall back into place after things resolve over there. Temporary price increases — it’s unfortunate, but it’s something that has to be confronted in a situation like this where you have a very serious problem.”

Trump regains some strength on immigration

Although economic promises were pivotal to Trump’s reelection, so were his goals of stricter immigration enforcement — and this issue may be reemerging as an asset.

Immigration emerged as one of Trump’s strengths early in his second term, with about half of U.S. adults saying they liked his approach, but approval of his handling of the issue dipped to 38% in January and February, after months of aggressive immigration enforcement that led to the shooting deaths of two U.S. citizens in Minneapolis.

Now, just under half of U.S. adults, 45%, approve of how he is handling that issue.

Brenda Theiss, an independent from Cullman, Ala., doesn’t like everything Trump is doing. But she gives him credit for being willing to disrupt the status quo to reduce the flow of immigrants who are in the country illegally, compared with Democratic Presidents Obama and Biden.

“I liked Obama; I voted for Obama — but Trump was the only one that did something. All of the other presidents sat back and went, ‘Well, there’s nothing we can do,’” the 73-year-old said. “He’s closing the border. He did it. Biden didn’t do it. For that, I give him one hundred.”

Over the last few months, the Trump administration has appeared to recalibrate its approach on immigration, moving away from aggressive, public-facing tactics toward a quieter approach to enforcement.

Immigration remains one of Trump’s stronger issues among Republicans. About 8 in 10 approve of his handling of the issue, which is roughly 10 points higher than the share who say he’s doing a good job as president.

Few approve of Trump on Iran or issues abroad

Trump’s handling of the war with Iran remains unpopular.

Only about one-third of U.S. adults approve of how he is handling Iran. Roughly two-thirds of Republicans approve, though an AP-NORC poll conducted last month found that younger Republicans are more likely to disapprove of Trump’s performance on the issue than older ones.

Similarly, about one-third of Americans approve of Trump’s approach to foreign policy. Though Trump has zeroed in on a more aggressive international approach this year — including capturing the leader of Venezuela and threatening Cuba — Americans’ views of his overall handling of foreign policy have not shifted significantly in recent months.

Amanda Wylie, a 22-year-old who lives in Athens, Ga., says Iran is one of the few issues where Trump doesn’t have her support.

“I feel like we’re wasting resources over there at this point and not for the benefit of the American people,” said Wylie, who identifies as a Republican-leaning independent. “Especially if everyone is worried about gas prices and the ultimate goal of this is to prevent Iran from having a nuclear weapon. Yes, that’s important, but at what cost?”

Sanders and Thomson-Deveaux write for the Associated Press. The AP-NORC poll of 1,117 adults was conducted May 14-18 using a sample drawn from NORC’s probability-based AmeriSpeak Panel, which is designed to be representative of the U.S. population. The margin of sampling error for adults overall is plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

The post Where Trump stands with Republicans nationally, according to the latest AP-NORC poll appeared first on Los Angeles Times.

The tragedy at the Islamic Center of San Diego in many ways followed an all-too-common script. With horrifying regularity, a young man carries out a mass shooting with weapons bearing neo-Nazi or hateful references scrawled in white. The shooter typically wears paraphernalia designed to promote accelerationism: the concept that only the collapse of society can usher in an Aryan utopia. There may also be a manifesto pulling from a familiar list of motives: anti-Semitism, grievance over supposed white genocide, admiration for past shooters (including Dylann Roof, who killed nine people at a African Methodist Episcopal church in South Carolina and Brenton Tarrant, who killed 51 people at two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand).

Clark and Vasquez apparently put together just such a manifesto; theirs runs to 75 pages and suggests they were sincerely “motivated by militant accelerationism” to do their part to bring about society’s downfall, says Katherine Keneally, the Institute for Strategic Dialogue’s U.S. director of threat analysis and prevention. In addition to intense Islamophobia, the pair expressed, in detail, a hatred for Black people (described as “low IQ subhumans” in the manifesto), women (who “tend to cause all the problems in the world”), and Jewish people (“The Universal Enemy” responsible for all the world’s wrongs). The phrase “IT’S THE JEWS” appears four times. (Both the video and the manifesto I found have not yet been confirmed as genuine but are being reviewed by law enforcement. Researchers I spoke with at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an anti-extremism think tank, obtained the same document and livestream recording.)

At the same time, Clark and Vasquez, by recording their heinous act, may have been trying to create a vibe for their own digital communities on Discord, a chat service that has become popular with gamers and extremists. Researchers refer to that as “memetic radicalisation,” according to the Global Network on Extremism and Technology, an academic initiative that researches how violent extremists use technology. Emphasizing extremism as an online vibe may also serve to draw nonwhite people to white supremacy. In November, Muhammad Nazriel Fadhel Hidayat, a 17-year-old Indonesian student, allegedly detonated several bombs at his school in Jakarta, injuring nearly 100 people but causing no deaths. Authorities recovered airsoft guns with neo-Nazi references scrawled on one in white and said that the Columbine high school shooters, as well as Roof and Tarrant, were among his influences.

Earlier this year, I asked Cody Zoschak, of the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, how the Jakarta student could get wrapped up in a subculture that hates nonwhite people. Zoschak suggested that the bomber may not have embraced all of the ideas of neo-Nazism, as descended from the Third Reich, but instead “understood it as a fandom” of the far right.

[Read: The era of normie extremism is here]

The approach is popular in what researchers term “nihilistic violence” circles, which include the “True Crime Community.” The TCC (which is unrelated to the popular nonfiction genre) is an internet subculture that valorizes mass shootings, especially Columbine. Clark likely dabbled in the TCC. He listed “True Crime” among his “interests” in the purported manifesto.

In the 1990s, many white-supremacist communities functioned on the fringes of society, in hard-to-reach places such as East Texas and the Idaho panhandle. They might well have rejected someone like Vasquez even if they agreed with the vitriol contained in the manifesto. Vasquez acknowledged that white supremacists might dismiss him as a “larping spic” and, in the document, defined himself as “half Northern Mexican.” But Vasquez also noted he was of “70-85% of European genetic descent” from French and Spanish roots, suggesting that he felt he belonged in communities that consider white people superior.

Either way, with the rise of digital extremism, there is little barrier to entry. Fans of accelerationist violence can don whatever identity they wish online. And should mass killers seek to impress and potentially inspire those fans, they need only log on to the right Discord server.

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