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Belarus to release 25 more prisoners as US eases sanctions
Belarus will release 25 more prisoners under an interim agreement with the United States, while Washington plans to lift sanctions on two Belarusian companies and pursue broader negotiations.
Ukrainian defence tech seeks new ways to scale up
Since Russia's full-scale invasion in February 2022, Ukraine's defence sector has expanded several-fold, becoming a significant source of military innovation, especially in unmanned systems, counter-drone technologies, electronic warfare and AI-driven combat systems. But finding the funds and personnel to scale up and to reach international markets remains a challenge.Spurred on by the demands of the front-line, Ukrainian defence companies say they can develop a minor component in a couple of weeks, or major hardware or software solutions within a year. This is several times faster than the usual development cycles in the sector. Tencore, founded in 2024, is now one of Ukraine’s largest providers of unmanned ground vehicles, well exceeding the production of NATO members in this category. Odd Systems, a Ukrainian combat cameras developer founded in 2023, launched its first thermal camera in 2024. Less than two years later, it is developing the fourth generation of the product, one that has evolved into a full vision system.According to Michael Singer, managing partner at Verne Capital, a venture capital fund supporting defence companies in Europe, this speed is down to the short feedback loop between the developer and the end user. “Ukrainian companies develop technologies in close interaction with soldiers and military units, test them under real combat conditions and rapidly incorporate feedback into the next generation of the product,” he says. “Sometimes we need to react to feedback and deploy an upgrade within hours,” says Polina Tymchenko, the spokesperson for Himera, which develops electronic warfare-resistant walkie-talkies. “It means that, as a company, you have to have a higher tolerance for risk, and also design your products in a way that fosters those quick changes.”Getting a product deployed by a combat command involves no paperwork other than a purchase order, says Perry Boyle, co-founder and chief executive of Mits Capital, a Ukrainian-US investment group focused on attracting capital for Ukraine's defence tech sector. “New weapons can be developed and deployed based largely on handshakes.”Nevertheless, the speed of development is largely subject to the level of funding, says Iryna Sukhomlyn, head of business development at RMachine, a developer of unmanned ground systems. “Financial support needs to start much earlier, particularly at technology readiness level 3-5, not only when most of the technological risk has already been removed,” she says.In 2025, Ukrainian defence tech companies attracted about $129 million in investment, with the true figure likely higher given the share of undisclosed security-sensitive deals, according to a report published by the Kyiv School of Economics. These investments were primarily concentrated in the AI and software segment, as they are considered a lower financial risk.Scaling production is a major barrierAccording to Iryna Supruniuk, business development director at Odd Systems, proving a defence product in Ukraine is not the end of the development process, but the beginning of a continuous evolution, since operational requirements change rapidly. “Continuous iteration remains our highest priority,” she says.It's also when production must scale up, which represents a major hurdle. “Scaling production requires capital, manufacturing capacity, components, certification, procurement access and reliable supply chains,” Singer says. Scale-up is also hampered by demographic pressures, especially a shortage of young specialists needed to expand engineering teams. Companies have reported struggling to replace specialists lost due to Russian attacks, mobilisation and emigration. In order to meet this scale-up challenge and finance arms production, begun allowing defence technologies to be exported, assuming it has an excess capacity. It has also announced the creation of ten defence and weapons export centres across Europe by the end of 2026.According to Singer, a technology that has demonstrated its value under real combat conditions has a fundamentally different credibility than a product that has only been tested in a laboratory or training environment. But combat validation alone doesn’t automatically create an international business. “Companies still need access to foreign defence ministries and procurement organisations, international certification, financing for production scale-up and, in many cases, local industrial partners,” he says.Already in 2026, the EU has signed several agreements with Ukraine that aim at joint defence technology development and production. These include allowing Ukraine to join the European Defence Fund, signing a financing agreement under the European Defence Industry Programme, and setting up the EU-Ukraine Drone Alliance.For Singer, it is important that European defence companies don’t just see their Ukrainian partners as technology suppliers, but rather as potential innovation partners. “Ukrainian companies bring speed, operational experience and an exceptional ability to iterate. European partners can provide industrial capacity, capital, established supply chains and access to European procurement markets.”Procurement possibilitiesWhen it comes to exports, the procurement and compliance processes involved require time, taking months or even years, and money. In other words, resources that small defence tech companies need if they are to improve and scale up their technologies. According to Sukhomlyn of RMachine, if the priority is to rapidly increase available defence capabilities, then the processes need to reflect that urgency. “If Europe wants defence innovation at wartime speed, its administrative processes also need to operate much closer to wartime speed,” she says, highlighting a need for support with certification, market access and mutual recognition of relevant testing. “Otherwise, we risk having excellent technology available but spending years making it administratively eligible to be purchased.”Related articlesRussia widens targeting of European research centresEU must support research managers in central and eastern Europe, says Visegrad fund headThis is a lesson Europe’s defence sector would do well to learn, Singer says. “Defence innovation needs to be organised around the speed and requirements of the end user, not around the speed of the bureaucracy.”Supruniuk says the European defence sector should rethink the balance between quality and quantity. “In many cases, a good-enough system available in thousands of units creates greater operational value than a perfect system available in dozens.”“For decades, everyone has been looking for that all-powerful, exquisite system that can protect everyone,” adds Tymchenko. “We see in crime that only scalable, dedicated, affordable solutions can actually defend democracies.”
EU membership bid gives boost to Moldova’s fledgling R&D landscape
Moldova’s push to join the EU is having the spillover effect of helping to improve the country’s R&D landscape, which in recent years has suffered from fragmentation, decreasing personnel and a lack of research infrastructure.The country became an EU candidate country in 2022, alongside Ukraine, and officially began accession negotiations in 2024. With a pro-EU government, Moldova has been actively carrying out reforms to align with EU standards. This has helped accelerate the development of R&D, said Igor Chiosa, acting head of the Research and Innovation Policy Directorate at Moldova’s Ministry of Education and Research. “Our R&D landscape is moving up, and we are more and more involved in the European Research Area,” he said. “The support we receive from the EU is very important, not only financially, but also because of incentives, consultation and capacity building.”The R&D landscape in the former Soviet republic is still relatively underdeveloped, despite attempts at improvement going back to a 2004 law on science and innovation and later reforms in 2017 and 2018. But the system remains in a “precarious situation” and “in the process of contraction,” according to an assessment carried out by the government for the current National Programme for Research and Innovation, which runs from 2024 to 2027. The analysis highlights in particular the declining number of researchers and PhDs, which has been continuously falling, as well as limited research funding. This is around 10 times lower than the EU average and “insufficient to maintain a level of research activity that supports higher education and meets the needs of the economy.” The mechanisms for allocating research funds are also described as inefficient, as well as the general fragmentation of the landscape, with research and innovation activities being carried out in 67 different places. The lack of strategic vision for research infrastructure is also noted. The strategy sets out to address these issues and is being fuelled by reforms linked to EU accession. Moldova now has a regulation on open science and gender equality. There is also a new support mechanism for technology transfer offices and a business-academia roadmap. In 2025, the country also became the first Eastern Partnership country to approve a Smart Specialisation strategy, which will coordinate its R&D efforts to focus on strengths, within a European context. “We’ve done a lot in terms of normative acts,” Chiosa said. Horizon Europe successMoldova is also seeing more success in the EU’s flagship R&D programme, Horizon Europe. The country has now won nearly €15 million in funding, already double the amount won under the previous programme, Horizon 2020, and more than the €10 million target set by the government. Chiosa said the priority has shifted now to winning more research-centred projects, rather than those related to support and capacity. Moldova is also targeting further involvement in large European projects. Last year, it joined the EuroHPC Joint Undertaking giving Moldovans access to Europe's supercomputing network. The country is also a member of Danubius-RI, a European research infrastructure focused on river and sea research. Despite these efforts, Moldova’s research capacity is still shackled by its limited R&D budget, which equates to 0.23% of its GDP. This is around half of what its neighbour Romania spends, which is the lowest in the EU. According to Chiosa, the research budget is increasing year-on-year, jumping by €6.34 million between 2024 and 2025. But this doesn’t show up when looking at it as a proportion of GDP. “Of course, it’s difficult,” he said. “That is why we are putting more emphasis on collaboration between business and academia, as well as participation in Horizon Europe, to try to diversify our sources of funding.”A World Bank loan of €30 million, plus a grant of €7.8 million, was agreed in 2025 to support the modernisation of Moldova’s universities. As part of this, a call was launched this year to provide universities grants of up to €900,000 to develop their research infrastructure. Moldova is also collaborating closely with Romania, with which it shares a common language, funding 100 joint projects in 2023 and 2024. This support has been instrumental. “They are helping with sharing their expertise, inviting us into consortia, and lots more,” Chiosa said. Looking forward, Moldova is eagerly anticipating joining the EU. “We are looking closely at what the EU is doing and will shape our future national programme in research innovation accordingly.”EU accession “blocked at a technical level”Moldova is aiming to join the EU by 2028, but despite its swift and eager efforts to meet the accession criteria, there remain obstacles outside of the country’s control. For a country to join the EU, it must have certain legislation in place and meet specific standards in various areas. This is categorised into six thematic clusters containing 33 chapters. Moldova and the EU have so far opened two of the clusters, numbers one and six. The first covers fundamental laws, such as the judiciary, security and financial legislation. The sixth covers external relations. The remaining four clusters are still unopened. This includes the third cluster, on competitiveness and growth, which contains the chapter on science and research.Related articlesQ&A: Albania’s ambition to become a ‘moderate innovator’Data corner: Horizon success rates are droppingThe European Commission has confirmed that these clusters are ready to be opened, with an official saying that the Commission is encouraging EU governments, who have the final say, to move forward on the matter. However, both clusters two and three remain blocked by the EU Council’s working party on enlargement and countries negotiating accession to the EU, a different official, representing the Council, confirmed.This working party is set to meet several times in the coming weeks, with a Council meeting scheduled for mid-October in which enlargement, and Moldova’s bid, will be discussed. But there is no certainty that these talks will lead to progress. According to the Council source, it is “completely impossible to foresee if and when the file will be unblocked,” citing the sensitivity of the matter. Moldova’s situation is particularly complicated. One factor is that it borders Ukraine and is increasingly embroiled in Russia’s war, with drone incursions occurring more often on its territory. Another is Transnistria, a Russian-backed breakaway state that lies within the territory of Moldova. It is unclear how the EU would be able to accept Moldova into the bloc while this situation remains unchanged. While there is no direct reason to delay opening cluster three with Moldova, as it covers matters unrelated to security, it could be that the EU is reluctant to speed through accession negotiations without first resolving broader, geopolitical issues.Chiosa is confident that, if and when the chapter on science and research is opened, Moldova will be able to finalise it quickly. It doesn’t require any legislative changes and is only a matter of proving certain standards, which Chiosa believes Moldova is well prepared to do. “We hope that chapter 25 on science and research will be one of the first chapters opened and closed,” he said.
Truth and Politics in the Age of Post-Truth
Get E-International Relations delivered to your inbox, free of charge. As you sign up, consider becoming a paid subscriber, or make a donation, to support our work. Subscribe This is an excerpt from Global Politics in a Post-Truth Era. You can download the book free of charge from E-International Relations. The term post-truth is by now so ubiquitous in describing the state of politics in the Western world and even beyond that the most pressing issue of the day appears to be about making democracy work in the era of post-truth rather than questioning the normalisation of the term itself in the first place. The critical turning point appeared to have occurred in 2016 when the term was chosen by the Oxford English Dictionary as ‘The Word of the Year.’ On its website, the Dictionary notes the transformation of post-truth from ‘being a peripheral term to being a mainstay in political commentary and connects ‘the spike in frequency’ directly with the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom and the election of Donald J. Trump in the United States – both occurring in 2016. Paired with the noun ‘politics,’ post-truth is defined as an adjective ‘relating to or denoting circumstances in which objective facts are less influential in shaping public opinion than appeals to emotion and personal belief.’ The Oxford English Dictionary traces the first use of the term to a 1992 essay in The Nation by the playwright Steve Tesich as he reflected on the 1980s Iran-Contra scandal and the 1990–91 Gulf War: We are rapidly becoming prototypes of a people that totalitarian monsters could only drool about in their dreams. All the dictators up to now have had to work hard at suppressing the truth. We, by our actions, are saying that this is no longer necessary, that we have acquired a spiritual mechanism that can denude truth of any significance. In a very fundamental way we, as a free people, have freely decided that we want to live in some post-truth world (Tesich 1992, 13; emphasis added). He then continued, The Gulf War is over but the war at home goes on. The gulf between rich and destitute widens – between those of us who live in a modern post-industrial nation and those of us who live in the Third World countries of our inner cities. The present administration’s response to this internal crisis has shifted from benign to malignant neglect. The current levels of misery and decomposition of our cities and the economic gulags of our ghettos are acceptable. Since there is only so much hope to go around, there is a freeze on hope. The have-nots have now been reclassified as never-will-haves (Tesich 1992, 13). In the context of Tesich’s essay, truth includes both facts, as in what happens, and ‘moral absolutes,’ as in the ‘self-evident truths mentioned in our Constitution’ (Tesich 1992, 14). Together, these two notions of truth entail the obligation to both act and react. The two passages cited above show that even in the early post-Cold War years, Tesich was already deeply concerned that the American people are neither prepared to act on truth nor react to truth that is disconcerting, or what he calls ‘bad news’ (Tesich 1992, 12). Accordingly, Tesich’s insight as captured by the term post-truth is not that truth is irrelevant to what we know, but rather it is irrelevant to how we act. In contrast, ‘post-truth politics,’ as defined by Oxford as a term that pitches ‘objective facts’ against ‘emotion and personal belief’ such that the latter appears to have overtaken the former in shaping ‘public opinion’ and thereby, democratic politics. When Tesich’s post-truth politics and its current usage are juxtaposed, the two are in fact not identical in terms of what truth is and how it relates to politics. Against such consideration, this chapter provides a critical survey of selected historical events and theoretical considerations for the purpose of gaining a more nuanced understanding of the relation between truth and politics. Truth and Language One notable impact of post-truth politics is that language is being overtly deployed as a political weapon not only by politicians and those in power, but among the general population. It seems that once facts are irrelevant to the validity of what is being said, language becomes the platform for an all-out political contest in which what is said is no more than an act of will expressed as an assertion of power and/or an exercise in defiance. As early as in the writings of Thucydides (460–400 BCE), the vulnerability of logos – which is the human capacity for rational discourse in tumultuous times – was already noted. Thucydides belonged to a school of Greek thought which maintained that language is conventional and that the association between name and things is a result of ‘human use and habit’ rather than ‘nature or divine dispensation’ (Connor 1984, 99). The conventional nature of language means that it is incapable of providing its users with any independent criteria for judgement. In Thucydides’ study of the Peloponnesian War (431–405 BCE), the subversion of logos as seen in the manipulation of language was introduced through his account of the civil war in Corcyra (Thucydides 1972, 236-245). The war first broke out in 427 BCE between the pro-Athenian democratic faction and the pro-Spartan oligarchic faction before it spread to the rest of the Greek world. There was a general breakdown of law and order, resulting in extreme violence and death. Language underwent changes that were reflective of the events of the time. The English philosopher Thomas Hobbes (1588–1679) translated Thucydides’ description of the situation as follows: The received value of names imposed for signification of things, was changed into arbitrary. For inconsiderate boldness, was counted true-hearted manliness: provident deliberation, a handsome fear: modesty, the cloak of cowardice: to be wise in everything, to be lazy in everything... he that had been so provident as not to need to do the one or the other, was said to be a dissolver of society, and one that stood in fear of his adversary. In brief, he that could outstrip another in the doing of an evil act, or that could persuade another thereto that never meant it, was commended (Hobbes 1839–1845, 8: 348; Thucydides 1972, 242-243). What concerned Thucydides most was that the meanings of words are no more than linguistic conventions that require logos to support them. The Corcyrean civil war was a reminder that such capacity cannot be assumed. This is why history understood as an authentic account of what happens matters. Guided by logos, the historian’s task is ‘the search after truth’, which is established through ‘the absence of the fabulous,’ including ‘the rejection of myth and unverifiable stories’ (de Jonge 2017, 2). Thus, history plays an important role in facilitating the stability of language – without which distinctions and judgements cannot be rendered communicable. Just like Thucydides, Hobbes was a nominalist who subscribed to the view that there is no inherent meaning to words. Hobbes’ state of nature, where there is no common authority, is precisely one in which distinctions cannot be made. As Hobbes put it, there is ‘no Mine and Thine distinct’ nor is there distinction between ‘the notions of Right and Wrong, Justice and Injustice’ (1968, 188; emphasis in original). This is clearly an unsustainable condition for everyone. Behind Hobbes’ famous words that life in the state of nature is ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short’ is his uncompromising argument for the ‘Leviathan’, which is described by the late American political theorist, Sheldon Wolin (1922–2015), as the ‘sovereign definer’ (Hobbes 1968, 186; Wolin 2004, 238–243). Accordingly, the social contract is importantly a ‘linguistic contract’ that binds all parties to ‘general names agreed upon’ (Peters 1979, 125; Hobbes 1968, 111). Through Thucydides and Hobbes, we can identify a line of thinking that sees politics as a contestation over the use of language, which is based on shared conventions and norms. Thus understood, politics is not a collective quest for the true nature of our being or an epistemological exercise in pursuit of true knowledge. Rather, politics is about humans living with one another by finding a shared language to communicate with one another on matters that affect them all. Truth is in that sense contingent on what is being said as opposed to setting the standard for it. In other words, truth is the embodiment of shareability among us. While truth as such ensures the viability of a political entity, truth by no means represents a normative standard to adjudicate among contesting actors in what they say, let alone in what they do. During Thucydides’ times, ancient China was also experiencing a tumultuous time as the ruling Zhou dynasty deteriorated into the period of the Warring States (481–221 BCE). This was when the rulers of Zhou no longer presided over the territories brought under its control through conquest. Instead of professing allegiance to the Zhou royalty, the lords of these territories became kings themselves to rule over their own land. The period was one marked by endless military campaigns as each of the seven major states aimed to conquer the rest (Lewis 1999). Yet, the period was also known for its intellectual vibrancy as different thinkers challenged the restoring of order among these warring states – including offering ideas and advice to rulers on good governance. Among these thinkers was Confucius (551–479 BCE). His thought, which came to be known as Confucianism, went on to become the state ideology of China from the Han dynasty (206 BCE–222 CE) until the end of the Qing dynasty in 1911 when China became a republic. The founding text of Confucianism was the Analects, which is a collection of dialogues between Confucius and his students as recorded by them. One key concept Confucius advanced is the ‘rectification of names’. Though the term only appears in one exchange in the Analects, it is considered a major aspect of Confucius’ thought. Generations of Confucian scholars from past and present, including Western academics, have debated over its interpretation (Makeham 2003). The passage in question reads as follows: Zi Lu said: ‘The monarch of the state of Wei wants you to govern the country, what is the first thing you plan on doing?’ Confucius said: ‘First it is necessary to rectify the names.’Zi Lu said: ‘Is that really what has to be done? You are being too pedantic, aren’t you now? How will you rectify these names?’Confucius said: ‘Zhong You, you are too unrefined. A gentleman, faced with a matter that he does not understand, takes a skeptical attitude. If names are not correct, one cannot speak smoothly and reasonably, and if one cannot speak smoothly and reasonably, affairs cannot be managed successfully. If affairs cannot be managed successfully, rites and music will not be conducted. If rites and music are not conducted, punishments will not be suitable. And if punishments are not suitable, the common people will not know what to do. So, when the gentleman uses names, it is necessary to be able to speak so that people understand. If one can say it, one can definitely do it. A gentleman should not be careless with words’ (Analects 13:3 in Cao 2016, 148). This translation is offered by the contemporary philosopher Cao Feng. As Cao notes, the passage is what started the whole debate over ‘exactly what kind of names did Confucius... wish to rectify’ (Cao 2016, 148). Of the three major groups of interpretation examined by Cao, beginning with classical Confucian scholarship, one is arguably the most influential and certainly most pertinent to the issue of language and politics. This is the interpretation that was first associated with the Neo-Confucian master, Zhu Xi (1130–1200), who argued that the ‘rectification of names is simply the rectification of politics’ (Cao 2016, 149). Within this interpretive framework, rectification has the dual functions of correction and prescription by ensuring that predetermined hierarchical roles are strictly adhered to through following ‘the system of rites and propriety’ (Cao 2016, 151). In addition, the rectification of names entails ‘using names to rectify actuality’ (Cao 2016, 151). Yet Cao rejects this whole body of interpretive works by arguing that these were ideas developed later. Instead, Cao suggests the following: The original meaning of Confucius’ rectification of names may, then, be quite simple. Confucius did not mean to establish a concrete, normative system of “names”; rather, Confucius was simply the first person in history to realize or remark upon the importance of language in politics. As a politician, he noticed and foresaw the impact that the indeterminacy, ambiguity, and arbitrariness of names would have on politics. Confucius recognized the political consequences of language’s not accurately expressing meaning or not being accurately received by people. He realized the great role that names, as a means of distinguishing right and wrong and establishing norms, could play in society and politics (Cao 2016, 168). Scholarly debates aside, Cao’s view has the advantage of identifying an interpretation of this controversial exchange in the Analects that enables its readers to extrapolate from it the observation that the meaning of words depends as much on their users as on their interpreters; neither of which can be predetermined. Accordingly, a good ruler is someone who can speak without ambiguity to his subjects and make good his words through actions. Stated differently, Cao’s view on what concerned Confucius then, who was living through times of protracted political upheaval, is that language is an indispensable political tool for those in power and can be deployed by both good and bad rulers alike. To sum up, this historical survey shows that politics as a war of words is by no means a distinctive marker of contemporary politics nor the Western world. Be it ancient or current, east or west, language is subject to manipulation to serve political purposes and when there is an outright war of words that defies existing norms, it is indicative of a political situation in which people no longer share a language and truth becomes irrelevant. Accordingly, political order entails stability in language use. Truth and Politics As previously noted, current use of the term post-truth as an adjective to the term ‘politics’ suggests that once there was a time when politics aligned with truth. Indeed, if we start with Plato’s Republic as the key founding text of Western political thought, we see that the ideal polis (city-state of ancient Greece) is where truth and politics converge, and justice is achieved. Written around 380 BCE when Athens was still coping with its defeat by the Spartans in the Peloponnesian War, the Republic is a defence of the rule of the ‘philosopher king’, defined as someone who is ‘guided by the truth’ and is ‘always and in every way’ in pursuit of the truth (Plato 1974, 490a). For Plato, truth converges with virtues and hence, letting the philosopher take charge of politics is to let the wisest and the most virtuous lead the less wise and the less virtuous even if it requires compulsion (Plato 1974, 499b). In Plato’s words, ‘…until the philosophers attain power in a city there will be no respite from evil for either city or citizens…’ (Plato 1974, 501e). The uncompromising rule of philosopher-kings is made palatable by the claim that we are all ‘earth- born brothers’ with random mixtures of gold, silver, bronze and iron, but only the gold can rule (Plato 1974, 414–415). Understandably, academic debates over the interpretation of Plato’s Republic revolve around the question of whether truth as attained in philosophy can be realised in politics as action and whether such a connection is even desirable. Without getting into the details of these scholarly exchanges, I suggest that they all share the concern that truth acquired through the rigorous process of philosophical reasoning is not without problem when applied to the real world of living humans. This is because not all humans are philosophers – and indeed, in Plato’s view, not everyone is capable of becoming a philosopher given the protracted and arduous training that one needs to endure to become one. Hannah Arendt (1906–1975), a highly influential political philosopher of the twentieth century, notes that ‘Plato was the first to introduce the division between those who know and do not act and those who act and do not know’ and that such a separation has remained ‘at the root of all theories of domination’ (Arendt 1958, 223, 225). What Arendt points out in this remark is not the gap between theory and practice, but rather that Plato provides the normative ground for those who know the truth to tell those who do not know what to do. Arendt herself took on the challenge of understanding the relationship between truth and politics through her analysis of Nazism and Stalinism. Arendt’s insight, which was controversial when The Origins of Totalitarianism was published in 1951, was to identify Nazism and Stalinism as representative of a new form of political rule – totalitarianism – making it distinct from ‘other forms of political oppression... such as despotism, tyranny and dictatorship’ (Arendt 1973, 460). Arendt defines totalitarianism as a self- contained system of ideas driven by their ‘logic’ and marked by a mode of reasoning called ‘ideological thinking.’ Ideological thinking as such is a distinctive form of political reasoning defined by three characteristics. First, ideological thinking claims to provide a ‘total explanation’ of all historical happenings, encompassing the past, the present, and the future. Second, while ideological thinking is an attempt to account for ‘factual reality’ in its totality, this mode of thinking is paradoxically divorced from reality and experience. This is because experience, being rooted in specificity, is clearly limited in its claim to totality. It follows that as its third characteristic, ideological thinking aims to emancipate thought from the limitation imposed by experience through a ‘specific method of demonstration.’ The method involves arranging facts into an ‘absolutely logical procedure’ that starts from an ‘axiomatically accepted premise’. It is, in short, a ‘process of deduction from a premise’ – which is the only possible movement in the realm of logic that leads to one definitive conclusion. This is how the ‘logicality of ideological thinking’ provides the basis for total explanation and the ‘principle of action’ for totalitarian movement (Arendt 1973, 468–474). Stated differently, totalitarianism is a form of uncompromising idealism that exists in one’s head irrespective of shared reality as experienced. It is the perverse form of what Arendt later refers to as ‘rational truth’, which is the product of the ‘speculative mind’ that belongs to philosophy, mathematics and the sciences. The ‘speculative mind’ is the mind working on its way to generate axioms and theories by relying on the cognitive capacity of the human brain (Arendt 1977, 231). The presence of others has no bearing whatsoever on rational truth. In contrast, ‘factual truth’ is what happens when humans are ‘living and acting together’ (Arendt 1977, 231). Factual truth is therefore particular and temporal by definition. But more importantly, factual truth is ‘political by nature’ because it can only be validated in the context of the human community (Arendt 1977, 238). In other words, factual truth is about humans in their plurality rather than in their singularity. For factual truth to be sustainable, we need what Arendt calls ‘common sense’ – understood as ‘community sense’ (Arendt 1982, 72). There is also another distinction about truth that Arendt makes which is pertinent to understanding how totalitarianism works. The issue is whether the so-called totalitarian ideology is simply an unnecessarily cumbersome way of saying that it is an all-round and polished lie. Here, Arendt calls totalitarian ideology the ‘modern lie’ – in contrast to the ‘traditional lie’. The latter is restricted by two conditions: that it is a lie about the ‘particulars’ and that it deceives only the ‘enemy’ – which means that the liar is not engaged in self- deception. The modern lie, however, involves a ‘complete rearrangement of the whole factual texture’. It also intends to deceive everyone alike, to the extent that those who initiate the lie eventually ‘fall victims to their own falsehood’ (Arendt 1977, 249–254). This distinction between the traditional and modern lie is important. It indicates that not only is totalitarianism a lie, but the lie is in fact too big to fit into the standard meaning of the word. To tell a lie from truth, we need a common standard. In the case of a traditional lie, the common standard is precisely ‘the fabric of factuality’. As such, a lie always appears as a ‘tear’ to that fabric. Yet, modern lies require making a surrogate reality with a completely different context for facts to fit ‘without seam, crack, or fissure, exactly as the facts fitted into their original context’. Arendt notes that as long as those who concoct the surrogate reality are prepared to engage in self- deception to ‘create a semblance of truthfulness’, there is nothing to prevent ‘these new stories, images, and non-facts from becoming an adequate substitute for reality and factuality’ (Arendt 1977, 253–254). Totalitarianism therefore requires a person to stand outside of the system itself in order to make sense of it. Arendt points out that it is futile for us to argue with (for example) a Nazi or a Stalinist on race or class. To confront totalitarianism requires more than just a confrontation with specific facts. It is a more fundamental confrontation between reality as experienced and its total rejection. This means that Nazism and Stalinism are more than radical ways of conducting racial conflict or class struggle. Rather: Totalitarian politics – far from being simply antisemitic or racist or imperialist or communist – use and abuse their own ideological and political elements until the basis of factual reality, from which the ideologies originally derived their propaganda value– the value of struggle, for instance, or the interest conflicts between Jews and their neighbours – have all but disappeared (Arendt 1973, xv). Accordingly: The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the convinced Communist, but people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction (that is, the reality of experience) and the distinction between true and false (that is, the standards of thought) no longer exist (Arendt 1973, 474). Who then is the ‘ideal subject’ of totalitarianism? Although there is a revival of interest in Arendt’s observation on truth and politics since the onset of post- truth politics, not enough has been said about her reply to the question (Hyvönen 2018; Klinkler 2018; Lee 2019; Zerilli 2020). Yet if we take a look at Arendt’s portrait of this ideal subject, her view is even more pertinent to our current challenge. As a self-contained system of ideas that is detached from experience, totalitarian thinking offers consistency in ways that reality cannot. Arendt notes that this kind of consistency is especially appealing to those who have lost a sense of bearing in the world (Arendt 1973, 353). They constitute what she calls the ‘masses’. The ‘mass man’ is thus a highly isolated and atomised individual, who is ‘obsessed by a desire to escape from reality’ (Arendt 1973, 318, 352). In his ‘essential homelessness’ the mass man can ‘no longer bear its accidental, incomprehensible aspects’ (Arendt 1973, 352). This longing for escape from reality is a ‘verdict against the world’ in which one is ‘forced to live’ but ‘cannot exist’ (Arendt 1973, 352). Such a situation is ripe for the ‘revolt of the masses’ against ‘common sense,’ which is ‘the result of their atomisation, of their loss of social status’ and with it, the ‘whole sector of communal relationships in whose framework common sense makes sense’ (Arendt 1973, 352). In short, the masses are people who are considered to be ‘superfluous or can be spared … [who] cannot be integrated into any organisation based on common interest’ (Arendt 1973, 311). Whether one agrees with Arendt’s analysis of the social conditions in the interwar years that led to the formation of the ‘masses’, her portrait of the ‘mass man’ is a powerful account of what can happen to an individual who has become disposable to the society that they used to belong to. Hand in hand with this phenomenon is indeed the collapse of ‘common sense’ that leaves the dislodged individual scrambling for reconnection. By offering the masses a substitute reality validated by the ‘logic of an idea’ rather than by experience, totalitarianism makes it possible for them to live in a world where there is no condition of plurality. Between ‘facing the anarchic growth and total arbitrariness of decay’ and ‘bowing down before the most rigid, fantastically fictitious consistency of an ideology’, the masses will likely ‘choose the latter’ (Arendt 1973, 352). A world created by ideology, then, is more attractive to the masses not because ‘they are stupid and wicked, but because in the general disaster this escape grants them a minimum of self- respect’ by conjuring up ‘a lying world of consistency which is more adequate to the needs of the human mind than reality itself’ (Arendt 1973, 353). Moreover, it is precisely this ability to guarantee consistency that makes it possible for the leaders of totalitarian movements to demand ‘total, unrestricted, unconditional and unalterable loyalty of the individual member’ (Arendt 1973, 323). While this chapter is not a study of the social factors that led to specific contemporary developments such as the result of the Brexit referendum or the election of Donald Trump in 2016, Arendt’s ‘mass man’ seem to have found their counterparts among the supporters of Brexit and Trumpism. Studies of voters’ profiles in both events point to a disproportionate share of supporters from white male lower income backgrounds without university educations. These are individuals who have either already lost their jobs to globalisation or who are at high risk of losing their job with very little capacity to be retrained for the twenty-first century market economy of advanced industrialised states (BBC 2016; Pew Research Center 2018). In short, these displaced workers are part of the tapestry forming the modern equivalent of Arendt’s ‘mass man’ – ready to be the recruits of totalitarianism. Conclusion If we step back to take a more comprehensive approach to the relationship between truth and politics, both historically and theoretically, it is not so obvious that 2016 is a defining moment. From ancient China and ancient Greece to our so-called post-truth age, the indeterminacy of language appears to be a persistent political challenge. Language is always open to manipulation by its users to serve power. Nonetheless, the tendency these days is to single out the ubiquity of social media and the proliferation of Internet platforms as the incubator for the countless cyberwars of words that in turn fuel the real world of politics. In this context, language is no longer the conveyor of objective facts and accurate information, but rather the medium for expressing subjective opinions and feelings, as captured by the Oxford Dictionary’s definition of the term ‘post-truth politics’. In contrast, the historical approach used in this chapter shows that it is in fact too easy to point the figure at the Internet and digital communication for the political challenge that we face today. What is being suggested here is that with or without the Internet, language, be it used to convey facts or emotions, is simply a tool for communication that humans have invented. While language per se cannot adjudicate what is true or not true, what is right or wrong, it embodies such capacity when language is a shared norm. That shared norm cannot be sustained without some semblance of cohesion in any given community. Any war of words, irrespective of its platform, is indicative of the breakdown of such cohesiveness. Returning to the original context in which the term post-truth politics was first used by Steve Tesich helps to identify the important distinction between truth as the standard for knowledge and truth as the standard for action. The two do not necessarily coincide. Placed in the context of the history of political thought, this distinction is in fact at the heart of Plato’s Republic. Yet when the philosopher as the quintessential bearer of truth becomes king, the polis that he rules over is far from the ideal of a just state that it purports to be. Instead, it is one that is held together by lies and coercion. What Arendt reveals through her study of Nazism and Stalinism is that it is dangerous for the kind of truth that philosophy generates – ‘rational truth’ – to become the guide to politics. Politics guided by rational truth can only be uncompromising and follows a logic of its own that cannot afford the ambiguity and indeterminacy of reality as lived experiences of humans. A world of post-truth politics can be an opportunity for a new kind of politics if it is indeed about dismantling the idea that truth is the ideal that politics should strive for. But as it stands, the post-truth politics of today is more about invoking a past that never exists to judge the presence as a crisis in naming when the real crisis is about rebuilding a shared space that has room for all – be they of the left, right or centre; cosmopolitan or parochial; civic-minded or self-centred; liberal-minded or bigoted. Politics is and always will be about striving for that space, without which no human can thrive. References Arendt, Hannah. 1958. The Human Condition. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press. Arendt, Hannah. 1973. The Origins of Totalitarianism. Rev. ed. New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Arendt, Hannah. 1977. “Truth and Politics.” In Between Past and Future, 227–264. New York: Penguin Books. Arendt, Hannah. 1982. Lectures on Kant’s Political Philosophy, edited by Ronald Beiner. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. British Broadcasting Corporation. 2016. “Brexit vote: The breakdown.” BBC News, December 7, 2016. https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-politics-38227674 Cao, Feng. 2016. “A New Examination of Confucius’ Rectification of Names.” Journal of Chinese Humanities 2: 147–171. https://doi-org.subzero.lib. uoguelph.ca/ doi/ 10.1163/23521341-12340032. Connor, W. Robert. 1984. Thucydides. Princeton: Princeton University Press. de Jonge, Casper C. 2017. “Dionysius of Halicarnassus on Thucydides.” in The Oxford Handbook of Thucydides, edited by Sara Forsdyke, Edith Foster, and Ryan Balot. Oxford University Press. DOI: 10.1093/ oxfordhb/9780199340385.013.17 https://www-oxfordhandbooks-com.subzero. lib.uoguelph.ca/view/10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199340385.001.0001/oxfordhb-9780199340385 Hyvönen, Ari-Elmeri. 2018. “Careless Speech: Conceptualizing Post-Truth Politics.” New Perspectives 26 (3): 31–55. https://www.proquest.com/ scholarly-journals/careless-speech-conceptualizing-post-truth/ docview/2204515132/se-2?accountid=11233. Hobbes, Thomas. 1839–1845. The English Works of Thomas Hobbes, edited by Sir William Molesworth. London: John Bohn. Vol. 8. Klinkner, Melanie. 2018. “Reasonable Truth.” International Journal of Media & Cultural Politics 14 (3): 393–99. doi:10.1386/macp.14.3.393_7. Lee, Haiyan. 2019. “When Nothing Is True, Everything Is Possible: On Truth and Power by Way of Socialist Realism.” PMLA/Publications of the Modern Language Association of America 134 (5). Cambridge University Press: 1157–64. https://doi.org/10.1632/pmla.2019.134.5.1157 Lewis, Mark E. 1999. “Warring States Political History.” In The Cambridge History of Ancient China: From the Origins of Civilization to 221 BC, edited by Michael Loewe and Edward Shaughnessy, 587–650. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Makeham, John. 2003. “Zheng ming (Rectification of names).” In RoutledgeCurzon Encyclopedia of Confucianism, edited by Xinzhong Yao. Vol. 2: 813-814. New York: Routledge. Oxford Languages, n. d. “Word of the Year 2016.” Accessed 19 August 2017. https://languages.oup.com/word-of-the-year/2016/ Peters, Richard. 1979. Hobbes. Westport: Greenwood Press. Pew Research Center. 2018. “An examination of the 2016 electorate, based on validated voters.” Report, August 9, 2018. https://www.pewresearch.org/ politics/2018/08/09/an-examination-of-the-2016-electorate-based-on- validated-voters/ Plato. 1974. Republic. Translated by G. M. A. Grube. Indianapolis: Hackett. Tesich, Steve. 1992. “Watergate Syndrome: A Government of Lies.” The Nation: 12-14. January 6/13, 1992. Thucydides. 1972. The Peloponnesian War. Translated by Rex Warner. Harmondsworth, England: Penguin Books. Wolin, Sheldon. 2004. Politics and Vision: Continuity and Innovation in Westen Political Thought. Expanded Edition. Princeton: Princeton University Press. Zerilli, Linda M. G. 2020. ‘Fact-Checking and Truth-Telling in an Age of Alternative Facts.’ Le foucaldien 6, no. 1: 2, 1–22. Theresa Man Ling Lee is an Associate Professor of Political Science at the University of Guelph (Canada). Lee is a political theorist who specializes in contemporary political thought. Her research and teaching areas include continental philosophy, Marxism and critical theory, feminism, postmodernism, philosophy of social science, psychoanalysis, multiculturalism, human rights, disability studies, modern Chinese political thought and comparative political theory. Lee has published on a wide range of subjects in these areas, including intercultural pedagogy and the challenges of teaching as a person with multiple minority designations in a Canadian university classroom.
Altrova Health Announces Proposed Debt Settlement
NOT FOR DISTRIBUTION TO UNITED STATES NEWS WIRE SERVICES OR FOR DISSEMINATION IN THE UNITED STATESToronto, Ontario--(Newsfile Corp. - September 16, 2026) - Altrova Health Inc. (CSE: ROVA) (OTCQB: ATVHF) (FSE: WF8) ("Altrova Health" or the "Company") announces that it proposes to enter into debt settlement agreements with three consultants to settle aggregate indebtedness of C$215,000 through the issuance of an aggregate of 3,583,333 common shares of the Company ("Common Shares") at a deemed...
Jensen Huang said China isn't debating AI doom. Weibo disagrees.
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Victims of sexual abuse with NDAs would be able to speak freely under new bill from GOP committee leader
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Next governor should fix dysfunctional CU Board of Regents
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Will Netflix’s Latest Horror Film Save Its Summer? And Introducing a New Data Source...
(Welcome to my weekly streaming ratings report, the single best guide to what’s popular in streaming TV and what isn’t. I’m the Entertainment Strategy Guy, a former streaming executive who now analyzes business strategy in the entertainment industry. If you were forwarded this email, please subscribe to get these insights each week.) All month, I’ve been polling you, my readers, on how we think the summer’s biggest blockbusters will do when they eventually land on streaming, and I wanted to share the results. First up, how readers think The Odyssey will perform when it comes to Peacock... People are pretty bullish that The Odyssey will smash it for Peacock. I don’t know that it will have as much rewatchability as Wicked did for kids, but we’ll see. It is now Universal’s highest-grossing film of all time. One note: almost half of Christopher Nolan’s films weren’t available for streaming the week The Odyssey came to theaters, including some of his biggest films like Inception, Dunkirk, Tenet, Oppenheimer and Insomnia. If you did want to watch the others, Prime Video had Memento and The Dark Knight trilogy, HBO Max only had The Dark Knight trilogy (even though Warner Bros. produced most of Nolan’s films), Hulu had The Prestige and Interstellar, and Paramount+ had Interstellar. So you needed at least two streaming subscriptions to catch the rest. Warner Bros. whiffed right here. I know they have long term licensing deals, but they should have tried to get as many Nolan films on HBO Max for launch as possible. Here are the results for Spider-Man: Brand New Day: The audience is a bit more mixed on this one, with everyone agreeing Spider-Man will swing to a big opening, but not necessarily elite or best all time. On to this week’s issue. Netflix continues searching for a hit straight-to-streaming summer film and Lioness and Ted Lasso allow me to look at the difference between a “hit” and a ‘hit for them”. All that, plus new YA/teen melodramas on Prime Video and Netflix, the House of the Dragon finale, USA Network claims a big opening, more big NFL ratings, all the flops, bombs and misses, and a whole lot more. But we start with a fun new data announcement. Let’s dive right in! (Reminder: The streaming ratings report focuses on the U.S. market and compiles data from Nielsen’s weekly top ten viewership ranks, Luminate’s Top Ten Data, JustWatch and Reelgood interest data, Samba TV household viewership, company datecdotes, Netflix hours viewed data, Google Trends, and IMDb to determine the most popular content. While most data points are current, Nielsen’s data covers the weeks of August 3rd to August 9th, 2026. You can find a link to my terminology here.) Subscribe A New Data Source: Reelgood’s Data on Content Libraries Here’s a fun new treat for you. Reelgood—an online service and app that lets users track where shows or films are streaming—is providing data every month for the Streaming Ratings Report on the size of each streamer’s catalogue, along with the new shows and films for each streamer. Yay! Previously, I had pulled “new shows on streamers premiering on the first of the month”: While I liked that data cut, it was a big wonky since it didn’t show all of the new shows or movies that came to a streamer each month. Instead, I would have preferred something like this from Reelgood’s annual report: And now we have it! I’m going to feature Reelgood’s data monthly, showing both total catalogue size and new shows and films appearing on the charts. That’s going to make these two cool new charts. First, here’s the size of various streamers’ film catalogues… (By the way, Reelgood offered to make the charts for me, but I like doing that task by hand to understand the data better.) They also provided data back to last year. Here’s the number of films timeline: And here are the new films on each streamer for the month prior to Aug: As I get used to this data, I plan to keep tinkering with how I display it, but I’m excited to feature it monthly. Today, I’m sharing the film charts; next issue, I’m going to feature TV shows by streamer. Now, in full disclosure, Reelgood is a sponsor of this little-newsletter-that-could. But in my constant quest to figure out what streamer various shows and films are on, I was already a Reelgood user before this sponsorship. I go to their website all the time, and their data is very accurate on where shows are (or have been). Plus, I’ve been sharing their weekly top ten lists for years now, pre-sponsorship. For me, this is a great win-win, since I get to amplify a service I love, and I get a cool new data source to play with. Now, normally folks don’t usually mention their sponsors directly, but as I wrote before, as I start featuring ads in my newsletter, I plan to be extremely open about who is sponsoring my writing so you can trust what I write. Television - Two Big Returning Shows Look Set to Take Over The Charts One key question when it comes to judging streaming shows is whether a show is a “hit” or a “hit for them”. To be clear, the former means a show that’s one of the top shows on streaming, no questions asked. The latter means a show is one of the biggest, for a given streamer. That distinction makes a big difference! It’s really good to be one of the biggest shows on a streamer; it’s much better to be the biggest on streaming, despite the size of a streamer. Because, as we’ve seen now, nearly every streamer—while lacking the number of subscribers or usage of Netflix—can make hit TV shows: Paramount released Landman, whose first and second seasons were among the top two TV shows the year they came out. HBO Max’s The Pitt’s second season is the biggest show of the year so far. Love Island USA was the top show in 2025 for Peacock. And, crucially for today’s discussion: Wayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy back in 2023, Ted Lasso was actually the top streaming show of the year according to Nielsen! So even Apple TV (formerly +) can make hit shows. It just doesn’t make them that often. And looking at the Nielsen charts this week, we have two prime candidates for this discussion: That’s right: Ted Lasso returned to Apple TV for its fourth season. Did it return in all its expected glory? Sure, though right now it’s still just a “hit for Apple TV”, but we’ll see how long it lasts on the charts. Its ten episodes are coming out weekly. (Smart choice, Apple!) Ted Lasso started out strong, actually making the Nielsen charts the week before new episodes dropped, which is a rare feat. (Shows like Stranger Things or Bridgerton have pulled that off. That’s terrific company to join!) On Nielsen, it opened to 14.4 million hours in its first week, and 16.6 million the week of 10-Aug. Here’s how that compares to previous seasons: Apple put out that this is their biggest TV launch through two days ever, and looking at the chart and Apple TV’s viewership history, I’d believe it. Here’s Apple’s top shows for season two and beyond: Other data tells a (mostly) similar story. Ted Lasso made Samba TV and it has elite IMDb scores, an insane 8.7 on 465K reviews. The only outlier is Luminate, where the latest season only had 7.4 million hours, and no other seasons made the top ten. As you’ll see below, that’s well below some other solid, but not spectacular shows like Sterling Point, Ride or Die or Furious. I’d be surprised if Ted Lasso isn’t bigger than those other shows, but it’s fine for different data sources to occasionally disagree. And while it’s sucky to bring this up, given that Warner Bros. produced this show, I do wonder how the streaming wars may have been different if Ted Lasso landed on HBO Max initially instead of Apple. I don’t think one show can make or break a streamer, but given HBO’s brand, it could have helped bring people to that streamer much earlier in its lifespan. (Though yeah, I don’t love calling out executives for passing on hit shows, since that’s just the nature of the job. Even the absolute best execs will pass on lots of successful shows. The key is not greenlighting the under-performers/misses.) The other show I’m thinking about in the “hit or hit for them” category is Lioness from Paramount+. Like Ted Lasso, its first season missed the charts, but it’s grown its audience since then. Here’s how season three opened: We’re just getting started with this issue, but the rest is for paid subscribers of the Entertainment Strategy Guy, so if you’d like to find out… How Lioness did on streaming... Two new melodramas for Netflix and Prime Video... Whether Netflix’s latest horror film saved its summer... Hulu’s Furious and Prime Video’s Ride or Die continuing their strong runs... The latest high profile showrunner to flop on streaming... All the flops, bombs and misses... And a whole lot more... ...please subscribe! We can only keep doing this great work with your support. Next week, we’ve got a double issue—since the week of 17-Aug had very few notable new shows or films—so I’ll look at HBO’s Lanterns, Prime Video’s Reacher, Netflix’s Tires, Outer Banks (which posted up huge numbers four years ago), an Aussie romance, and another baseball event (that didn’t resonate). And a bunch of movies like the latest dramedy from an Adam Sandler daughter, Don’t Say Good Luck, Camp Rock 3 on Disney Channel and Disney+, Michael on Starz, and more. Later this month, we’ve got a ton of shows and films to analyze! Movies will be the big story, featuring a box office bomb (Supergirl on HBO Max) and an “underperformer” (The Mandalorian and Grogu on Disney+) contending with a bunch of star-studded straight-to-streaming films like Netflix’s The Whisper Man (Adam Scott, Michelle Monaghan and De Niro!), Mayday on Apple TV+ (Ryan Reynolds and Kenneth Branagh!), The Runner (Gal Gadot) and The Last Sunrise (Eva Longoria and Maia Reficco) on Prime Video. Plus, a ton of TV shows have sophomore seasons coming out. Will The Gentleman put up big numbers on Netflix or suffer from a sophomore slump? Leanne and Beauty in Black on Netflix seem small, but they both might be bigger than you think. Hulu has a bunch of shows: a new season of The Secret Lives of Mormon Wives (the first after all the controversy last year) and the second season of Chad Powers (from Peyton Manning’s production company and starring Glen Powell). This one flopped last year; can it score a touchdown this year? Same goes for FX’s Adults, which I didn’t track last year; will it hit this year? Peacock’s The Office spinoff, The Paper and Apple TV’s Dark Matter also return for second seasons. And Netflix has more Untold specials featuring Vince Young, Raygun (that horrible breakdancer) and Mr. T. Long term, Paramount+ is rebooting yet another franchise, Clueless, and I’m somewhat bullish on this new show. The talent attached (Alicia Silverstone) and creative Josh Schwartz and Stephanie Savage (of The O.C. and Gossip Girl) also feel solid...if they make it funny like the original.
Zelenskyy says Ukraine will pause strikes on Russia if Kremlin spares critical infrastructure
His comments Monday follow President Donald Trump’s claim that Russia and Ukraine agreed not to target each other’s energy infrastructure.
Trump claims Russia-Ukraine energy truce; Kyiv says not yet
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Please Stop Conflating Sports Betting Handle With Spending On Entertainment
Editor’s note: The Cashout for paid subscribers will publish on Tuesday. Every September there’s a huge uptick in how much people bet on sports with the start of football season. Which means it’s time to get ahead of a ridiculous narrative before it picks up steam on social media or in mainstream media. Subscribe Every few months I see some version of this: [ Charlie Bilello@charliebilello Americans bet over $165 billion on sports last year, which is more than they spent on movies, books, concerts and sports tickets - combined. 1:00 PM · Jun 28, 2026 · 4.1M Views 258 Replies · 674 Reposts · 4.23K Likes ](https://x.com/charliebilello/status/2071217050328895935?s=20) Fortune published this in July. The headline and start of the story tell the same narrative (emphasis added): Gambling becomes America’s favorite pastime as Americans spend more on sports bets than movies, arts, museums, and music combined: The North American box office totaled $8.87 billion in 2025, which is still 22% below pre-pandemic levels. Recorded music revenue hit a record $11.5 billion. Live music like concerts and festivals brought in $18.51 billion. Meanwhile, book publishers tracked by the Association of American Publishers reported $14.6 billion for the year. And the U.S. museum industry generated an estimated $16.4 billion. Add it up and the total comes to roughly $70 billion, which is less than half what Americans wagered on sports. The story, to its credit, goes on to tell us why sports betting is entirely different, although people who only read headlines will miss that nuance. (The tweet above definitely skips over the nuance.) I will mostly be preaching to the choir here, but it’s worth saying out loud: Wagering money on sports is not the same thing as spending on entertainment from a financial perspective. When you spend money on a movie or concert ticket, that money is gone. You exchanged money for an experience. It’s a good trade! I get to have fun for “x” dollars. (Unless the movie sucks, I guess.) When you bet money on sports, the money is not necessarily gone every time you wager it. It could be gone, but sometimes it’s not and you actually get more money back! That’s not “spending” money or something you should try to compare directly to entertainment spend. A far better comp would be how much people lose at sports betting. That number was more like $17 billion in the US last year, at least for state-regulated sportsbooks. Why are we trying to equate handle and entertainment spending? I dunno. It makes for splashy headlines, I guess. Now, people should be betting for entertainment, and not because they expect to win in the long term; no doubt about it. Anyway, here’s hoping I don’t see people saying Americans “spent” hundreds of millions of dollars on sports betting this fall. Mindway AI and DraftKings Expand Responsible Gaming Drive with Launch of Gamalyze American Football In time for the NFL kickoff, Mindway AI has expanded its partnership with DraftKings to launch Gamalyze American Football the second title in the neuroscience-based Gamalyze Sports collection. Following the success of Gamalyze Football (soccer) during the FIFA World Cup, this gridiron-themed update replaces static questionnaires with immersive, stadium-inspired gameplay. Backed by 10+ years of Aarhus University research, Gamalyze evaluates real-time decision-making to deliver instant, unbiased player risk assessments. Integrated into DraftKings’ platform and nationwide activations, it engages fans when excitement peaks. Ready to upgrade your player protection? Contact Mindway AI to try Gamalyze Sports today. Gambling news roundup 🚨The important stuff 1st NFL Sunday of Season ‘Champagne-Popping Day for Bettors’ (Covers): “The first NFL Sunday of the season was a champagne-popping day for bettors, while the book was left cleaning up the corks,” Caesars’ head of football Joey Feazel said prior to the Sunday night game. “Caesars Sportsbook reported that Detroit’s Jahmyr Gibbs, Baltimore’s Derrick Henry, Indianapolis’ Jonathan Taylor, and Atlanta’s Bijan Robinson were among the top five most-bet players to reach the end zone, and all of them cashed tickets.” [ Ben Fawkes@BFawkes22 A @CaesarsSports oddsmaker on how Week 1 has gone so far: “The first NFL Sunday of the season was a champagne-popping day for bettors, while the book was left cleaning up the corks.” ➡️8 of 10 most popular anytime TD scorers cashed 1:31 AM · Sep 14, 2026 · 276K Views 16 Replies · 16 Reposts · 615 Likes ](https://x.com/BFawkes22/status/2099310001927995849?s=20) 🔍 Are we already getting a “customer-friendly results” narrative in Week 1? NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell spoke with CNBC about the prediction markets industry: “We think that there needs to be stronger regulations into the predictive markets,” Goodell said. “We want to see that to protect the integrity of our game. We want to make sure we’re protecting the consumers that are on those platforms for the NFL. So, we’re continuing to have conversations with them and talk to them about the things that we think they need to do to strengthen that so that they could be potential partners at some point in the future.” More on the NFL + PMs: [ Straight to the Point Quid Pro Quo The NFL has asked Kalshi and other prediction markets to remove certain easy to manipulate markets. Does a potential partnership hang in the balance… Read more 6 hours ago · 19 likes · Steve Ruddock ](https://straighttothepoint.substack.com/p/quid-pro-quo?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web&embedding_publication_id=1472492) Kalshi was on my podcast?: Kalshi was on my podcast [ The Event Horizon Episode 32: Talking Prediction Market Enforcement With Kalshi’s Robert DeNault Kalshi? On my podcast? Yep… Listen now 5 hours ago · 6 likes · 1 comment · Dustin Gouker ](https://nexteventhorizon.substack.com/p/episode-32-talking-prediction-market-enforcement-kalshi?utm_source=substack&utm_campaign=post_embed&utm_medium=web&embedding_publication_id=1472492) DraftKings Enhances Responsible Engagement Efforts With New Customer Initiatives, Tools and Education (press release): DraftKings Inc. today announced a series of new initiatives designed to promote responsible engagement and increase awareness and use of the tools and resources to help customers make informed decisions and engage responsibly. The efforts include a new digital advertising campaign featuring Kevin Hart and Nick Jonas that promotes responsible engagement, a PGA TOUR sweepstakes that promotes customer engagement with responsible engagement features, the launch of Gamalyze American Football in collaboration with Mindway AI, and new custom cool-off options that give customers enhanced flexibility when choosing a cool-off period. The initiatives build on DraftKings’ commitment to making responsible engagement an integral part of the customer experience and providing players with accessible tools and resources that help them make informed choices about their gaming experience. “At DraftKings, responsible engagement is embedded in how we operate and is essential to building trust with our customers and our long-term sustainability,” said Lori Kalani, Chief Responsible Gaming Officer at DraftKings. “We’ve continued to invest in tools and resources that give customers enhanced access to information about their play and more choices for managing how they engage. From My Budget Builder and My Stat Sheet to player-set limits and new custom cool-offs, we’re continuing to evolve our approach while promoting awareness and use of the tools and resources available to help customers play responsibly.” … DraftKings is launching a new digital advertising campaign featuring Kevin Hart and Nick Jonas that continues the pair’s road trip and promotes responsible engagement and awareness of the tools and resources available to help customers make informed choices about their gaming experience and engage responsibly. The campaign was initially launched on Sep. 10th and will reach customers through digital channels, bringing responsible engagement messaging to fans in an engaging way. bet365 Launches “The Matchup,” a New Weekly Video Podcast Hosted by Super Bowl Champions Chris Harris Jr. and Emmanuel Sanders (press release): "bet365, a global leader in online sports betting and gaming, today announced the launch of “The Matchup,” a new weekly video podcast hosted by former Super Bowl Champions Chris Harris Jr. and Emmanuel Sanders. Featuring current and former NFL players, the original series marks a significant, intentional investment in football as bet365 works to become a go-to destination for U.S. bettors throughout the season. “The Matchup” premieres September 10, with new episodes released weekly in both video and audio formats. Full episodes will be available on YouTube, Apple Podcasts, Spotify and wherever podcasts are available, with clips and additional content rolling out across YouTube, X, Instagram, Facebook, Threads, and TikTok. The show is being produced by Last Row Digital Media. Each week, Harris and Sanders will be joined by guests from across the game to break down the biggest NFL matchups, unpack the latest league news and share perspectives that go beyond the box score. By bringing together two former players with distinct perspectives and firsthand experience, “The Matchup” will give audiences timely context and a deeper understanding of the teams, players and storylines shaping the week ahead. “Every great football conversation starts with a matchup—who has the edge, what everyone is overlooking and what could change the game,” said Chris Harris Jr. “Emmanuel and I have experienced the game from different perspectives, and we want the audience to feel like they are part of the conversation and leave every episode knowing more about the week ahead.” Today’s iGaming companies face new litigation threats as expansive consumer protection statutes spark lawsuits with sky’s-the-limit aspirations, sometimes backed by private funders. Clients of Ifrah Law have a staunch defender in Robert Ward – an agile litigator and case tactician who responds to the changing state of play with creative legal defenses and efficient case-closing strategies. Robert draws on federal clerkship experience and appellate defense work to advise iGaming clients on litigation exposure, white-collar risk, and regulatory defense across multiple jurisdictions. Read More: Robert Ward on Helping iGaming Clients Outmaneuver Lawsuit-Obsessed Adversaries 🔮 Prediction markets Update on legal action in Connecticut: [ Daniel Wallach@WALLACHLEGAL Connecticut says gaming service license holders which received subpoenas over sports prediction markets “are not under investigation” by the @CTDCP but may possess information that could assist the state “in evaluating the conduct of prediction market platforms.” 2:31 PM · Sep 13, 2026 · 844 Views 5 Likes ](https://x.com/WALLACHLEGAL/status/2099143914271670576?s=20) American Gaming Association Opposes CFTC Bid to Block New York Prediction-Market Enforcement (DeFi Rate): “The brief points to the Ninth Circuit’s Aug. 28 decision in KalshiEX LLC v. Assad, which the AGA says supports New York’s authority to regulate sports contracts as gambling. It also cites Kalshi advertising, product comparisons and reporting on Kalshi’s sports volume to argue that the economic product resembles a sportsbook wager more than a conventional financial hedge.” [ Daniel Wallach@WALLACHLEGAL AGA intervenes in CFTC v. NY case to oppose CFTC request for preliminary injunction, says the CFTC’s arguments “obfuscate a simple truth: prediction markets offer sports betting.” Highlights CA9 decision, @DustinGouker (6x), and $1.32 billion in OSB taxes for NY (0 from PMs). Daniel Wallach @WALLACHLEGAL High stakes hearing on Monday in CFTC v. New York State. If SDNY judge Lorna Schofield denies the CFTC’s motion for preliminary injunction, the New York AG would have a clearer path for securing a state court geofencing order against Kalshi, Coinbase, and Gemini Titan. 2:08 AM · Sep 13, 2026 · 4.78K Views 1 Reply · 2 Reposts · 8 Likes ](https://x.com/WALLACHLEGAL/status/2098957043474280584?s=20) Gaming Commission remains member of gambling council after questions raised over ties to Kalshi (Mass Live): “The Massachusetts Gaming Commission will not follow the leads of gaming regulators in Ohio and Michigan and drop ties with the National Council on Problem Gambling over its new association with Kalshi.” Sponsor’s messageTrusted Voices: Conversations About Betting is designed to equip adults, including parents and coaches, with tools and resources to talk to young people about gambling, including information on warning signs, risks and proxy betting. The program is led by retired professional basketball player Randy Livingston and his wife, basketball agent Anita Smith, who share their personal stories related to problem gambling, with the hope of preventing others from experiencing similar harms. Learn more and join the conversation here. 📣 Industry news Gaming M&A: Latest Mergers, Acquisitions and Deals (SBC Americas): “But what else is happening in the world of gaming mergers, acquisitions, investments, and partnerships? Here, we round up some of the news you might have missed.” BetMGM Named Official Sports Betting and Online Casino Partner of the Minnesota Vikings in Canada (press release): BetMGM, a leading iGaming and sports betting operator, announced a multi-year partnership with the Minnesota Vikings, naming it the Official Sports Betting Partner and Online Casino Partner of the team in Canada. The agreement gives BetMGM rights to use Vikings marks across approved sports betting, online casino and marketing activities in Canada. In addition, Vikings Big Kick LuckyTap™, a casino game by Design Works Gaming, is available now exclusively at BetMGM Casino in Alberta and Ontario. “Vikings fans bring a level of passion and loyalty that extends well beyond game day,” said Matt Prevost, Chief Revenue Officer at BetMGM. “As the home of one of the largest collections of sports-themed casino content in North America, BetMGM is uniquely positioned to combine sports fandom with iGaming. We are eager to start football season off strong with another fantastic partnership especially as we expand our reach in Canada to Alberta.” Martin Nance, Minnesota Vikings Chief Marketing Officer, said, “As we continue to deepen our connection with Vikings fans across Canada, we’re proud to welcome BetMGM as the team’s official sports betting and online casino partner in Canada. Their commitment to innovation and fan engagement aligns well with our organization, and we’re excited to create memorable experiences that celebrate Vikings football and connect with Canadian fans in new and meaningful ways.” Caesars Entertainment Launches Ball Rush Jackpots™ in New Jersey,the Latest Proprietary Online Title from Empire Creative™ (press release): Caesars Entertainment, Inc. (NASDAQ: CZR) (“Caesars”) today announced the launch of Ball Rush Jackpots™, a new ball-and-peg style online casino game developed by Empire Creative™, the Company’s in-house game development studio. Now live in New Jersey across Caesars Palace Online Casino, Caesars Sportsbook & Casino and Horseshoe Online Casino, Ball Rush Jackpots is expected to become available in additional jurisdictions where Caesars offers online casino gaming following regulatory approval. The title expands Caesars’ growing portfolio of proprietary online casino titles, following the successful launch of Ca$hline™ earlier this year and further diversifying the Company’s lineup beyond traditional slots and table games. Ball Rush Jackpots follows the traditional ball-drop gameplay experience where players drop a ball down a board filled with pegs to land in a prize slot. As balls navigate independently through a field of pegs, every drop creates new opportunities to collect feature symbols, unlock bonuses and pursue jackpots, delivering a different experience with every round. “Ball Rush Jackpots delivers a different kind of casino experience for our players, combining easy-to-understand gameplay with meaningful customization, exciting bonus opportunities and jackpot potential,” said Matthew Sunderland, Senior Vice President and Chief iGaming Officer at Caesars Digital. “As we continue expanding our proprietary content portfolio, we’re focused on creating games that are simple to pick up, rewarding to revisit and designed around the features players enjoy most.” Bally’s Corporation Secures New Financing to Support the Development of the Bally’s Bronx Project (press release): Bally’s Corporation (NYSE: BALY) (“Bally’s” or the “Company”) announced today that it secured new financing led by WhiteHawk Capital Partners, LP to fund further development of the Bally’s Bronx project and general corporate purposes. The new financing comprises closing date term loan commitments in an aggregate principal amount of $400 million and delayed draw term loan commitments in an aggregate principal amount of $160 million (together, the “Facilities”). … Bally’s Chairman of the Board, Soo Kim, commented, “This important financing allows us to progress the pre-construction planning process so that we are ready to complete the remainder of the capital raise and remain on schedule. Furthermore, the additional liquidity provides us greater flexibility for other capital opportunities.” WORLD JAI ALAI LEAGUE LAUNCHES CENTENNIAL SEASON AND ENTERS NEXT CHAPTER IN MIAMI (press release): The World Jai Alai League will open its 2026 fall season on Tuesday, September 15 at Miami’s JAM Arena, beginning a milestone season that marks 100 years since professional Jai Alai first arrived in Miami. Season X, the tenth season of the Battle Court team-based competition launched in 2022, will also be the first since entrepreneur and sports asset investor Rob Gough acquired the World Jai Alai League in August 2026. The acquisition marks the beginning of a new chapter for the league. World Jai Alai League will maintain the existing Battle Court competition and operating format, with Chief Operating Officer Scott Savin overseeing Season X. Gough and his team will use the coming months to listen to players and fans, evaluate opportunities across the league, and execute plans for a broader evolution of Jai Alai’s presentation, live experience, media, marketing and commercial strategy beginning in 2027. “This is a really unique moment for Jai Alai,” said Rob Gough, Owner of the World Jai Alai League. “We have a sport with more than 100 years of history in Miami, extraordinary athletes and incredible speed, but I also believe there is enormous untapped potential.” bet365 reveals most popular online slots in 3 US states in August (SBC Americas): “In its monthly Gaming Insights and Performance report, growing online casino operator bet365 tracks player trends and game performance in online slots across its North American online casino markets.” The Closing Line is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts and support my work, consider becoming a free or paid subscriber. Subscribe
How $500 explains Republican health policy, and the GLP-1 Rx wave
The one health care policy Republicans agree on, and a look at how rural providers are approaching AI.
Hain Celestial agrees to sell international business to AURELIUS for $323M
Hain Celestial agrees to sell its international business to AURELIUS for $323M as it focuses on debt reduction.
Zhongguancun Science-Tech Leasing Enters Finance Lease Agreement With Wuxi Langshion Lightweight Technology
Zhongguancun Science-Tech Leasing Co Ltd HKEX:1601:
McCuskey agrees to resign as LIG - Illinois Times, the capital city's source of news, politics, arts, entertainment, culture
You may know that embattled Legislative Inspector General Michael McCuskey has agreed to resign his post by the end of September. But this sorry saga shouldn’t end there. The Legislative Ethics Commission should immediately launch an investigation into why so many women over the years have said they believed they were mistreated and even belittled […]
Some Democrats are recalibrating their approach to transgender issues as they seek a path to power
California Gov. Gavin Newsom does not like being on Donald Trump’s side on any issue. But when it comes to transgender girls and women in sports, particularly at the school level, the Democrat said he largely agrees with the Republican president. Newsom, one of his party’s leading White House prospects, believes it’s “deeply unfair” for […]
Live Oak Bank Named Official Business Bank of UNCW Athletics
WILMINGTON, N.C., Sept. 14, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Live Oak Bank has been named the Official Business Bank of UNCW Athletics under a multi-year agreement, expanding a relationship that already includes title sponsorship of the Live Oak Bank Holiday Classic men's basketball tournament. The agreement gives Live Oak year-round presence across Seahawk athletics, including men’s and women’s basketball at Trask Coliseum and baseball at Brooks Field. UNCW has been a talent pipeline for Live Oak for y
Crane Company Announces Agreement to Acquire U.S. Water Pump Business from First Reserve-Backed Trillium Flow Technologies
STAMFORD, Conn., September 14, 2026--Crane Company (NYSE:CR) ("Crane" or the "Company"), a premier industrial manufacturing and technology company, today announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire the U.S. pump business from First Reserve-Backed Trillium Flow Technologies, a leading provider of highly engineered pump technologies primarily serving the U.S. municipal water and wastewater markets for approximately $240 million, representing a multiple of approximately 14.
Hain Celestial to Sell International Business to AURELIUS for $323 Million
Hain Celestial agrees to sell its International business to AURELIUS for $323 million to reduce debt and streamline operations.Quiver AI SummaryHain Celestial has announced the sale of its International business to the private equity firm AURELIUS for approximately $323 million. This agreement is part of Hain's strategic review aimed at maximizing stakeholder value and simplifying its operations. The sale includes numerous well-known brands such
Hain Celestial Enters Into Definitive Agreement to Sell International Business
Sale would simplify Hain’s portfolio and create a focused North American business; Net proceeds from the transaction would be used to reduce debt Hain Celestial Enters Into Definitive Agreement to Sell International Business Sale would simplify Hain’s portfolio and create a focused North American business; Net proceeds from the transaction would be used to reduce debt HOBOKEN, N.J., Sept. 14, 2026 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- As part of its ongoing strategic review, Hain Celestial announced today it has
Arsenal confirm pre-agreement for winger transfer
Andria Bartishvili’s future transfer to Arsenal has been officially confirmed by the club, with the Georgia teenager to join next July.Photo via Arsenal.comArsenal have officially announced that 17-...
“I 100% agree that Dr. Jerry Buss the greatest …
“I 100% agree that Dr. Jerry Buss the greatest …
ATP Media & L1VE Agree Landmark Immersive Rights Partnership
NEW YORK & LONDON--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 14, 2026--
Physitrack Selected by US Metropolitan Healthcare System for Enterprise-Wide, Epic-Integrated Digital Rehabilitation
Three-year enterprise agreement with a total three year contract value of approximately US$78,000 (approximately EUR 67,000) in total, covering an enterprise-wide deployment and full Epic and MyChart integration.Physitrack PLC (Nasdaq First North Premier Growth Market: PTRK), a global provider of d…
Trump agreed to new ethics rules to get a crypto bill across the line. But that might not be enough
To help get a sweeping cryptocurrency bill across the line, President Donald Trump has agreed to new ethics provisions. On Sunday night, Republicans said Trump had agreed to a requirement
Trump agreed to new ethics rules to get a crypto bill across the line. But that might not be enough
To help get a sweeping cryptocurrency bill across the line, President Donald Trump has agreed to new ethics provisions.
Trump agreed to new ethics rules to get a crypto bill across the line. But that might not be enough
To help get a sweeping cryptocurrency bill across the line, President Donald Trump has agreed to new ethics provisions.
Trump agreed to new ethics rules to get a crypto bill across the line. But that might not be enough
To help get a sweeping cryptocurrency bill across the line, President Donald Trump has agreed to new ethics provisions.
Sorbent to acquire Kenvue's Stayfree and Carefree business in Australia and New Zealand
Sorbent Paper Company Pty Ltd ("Sorbent") has signed an agreement with Kenvue's Singaporean subsidiary to acquire its Stayfree and Carefree feminine care business in Australia and New Zealand. Following completion of the transaction, the business in New Zealand will be managed by Sorbent's affiliate, Cottonsoft.
Washington leaders are far from being on the same page over AI
Although AI CEO’s Sam Altman and Elon Musk among others agreed with Dario Amodei’s proposal to work together to slow down development of the technology, CNN’s Jake Tapper notes that political leaders seem to be far from being in any sort of agreement. This video has been updated with the city in Ireland where President Trump made his remarks on Sunday.
Trump agrees to new bipartisan ethics provision in massive crypto bill, Republican senators say
President Donald Trump has agreed to a significant portion of a stringent ethics proposal that is part of a broader cryptocurrency bill headed for a key vote this week.
Top Lawmakers Agree AI’s Risks Are Rising but Say They Have No Quick Fix
As warnings rapidly mount over the pace and potential dangers of artificial intelligence development, the top Republican and Democrat in the House agreed on Sunday that Congress should put guardrails in place.
Political debate over AI intensifies amid warnings about ‘catastrophic risk’
(CNN) — The debate around artificial intelligence is ramping up in Washington, with Democratic lawmakers sounding alarms on the dangers they say the technology poses and Republican leaders suggesting those concerns are inflated and secondary to winning the AI race with China.Some Democratic lawmakers last week pressured House Speaker Mike Johnson to reconvene the chamber immediately to work on AI regulation, citing what they describe as the “catastrophic risk posed by advanced artificial intelligence.” But the Louisiana Republican on Sunday resisted those calls, instead saying industry leaders should meet with lawmakers to find “balance” in any potential guardrails.“If Congress just races in and does some sort of emergency session to try to regulate AI, we will lose the race to China, and that is a threat to every single American,” Johnson said on CNN’s “State of the Union.”Meanwhile, former President Barack Obama told Democrats to make artificial intelligence regulation a central part of their agenda during a private fundraiser Thursday, warning that the technology could be dangerous “if we don’t get on top of it.”In a fireside chat with House Democratic Leader Hakeem Jeffries, Obama said whoever runs in the 2028 presidential election should have a “very clear plan” on AI, adding that he saw the need for a “blueprint” on AI guardrails even at the end of his presidency a decade ago.“Certainly, if I were running for president next year, this would be one of my central agendas, and I would have a very clear plan, and I would talk about this, and I would say, ‘Here’s our plan for safety, here’s our plan for making sure our kids are not corrupted by this,’” he said, per excerpts of the remarks provided to CNN by his office. Obama’s remarks were first reported by the New York Times.Concerns over the rapid acceleration of AI reached a fever pitch after Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wrote in a 3,800-word essay Saturday that the race to develop artificial intelligence is in dire need of a slowdown. The call to action came after an OpenAI test model breached the Hugging Face online platform, deepening concerns about cybersecurity.In an exclusive interview with CNN’s Anderson Cooper on Saturday, Amodei called on industry leaders to work together to avoid “the wrong paths” and the possibility of AI harming humanity.One Anthropic researcher, Jacob Coxon, resigned from the firm over worries that the industry wasn’t doing enough to prevent AI from destroying humanity by the end of the decade.Obama said Democrats need a plan to get their agenda on AI underway should they win the House majority in this year’s midterms.Speaking to Jeffries, who is presumed to be speaker of the House should Democrats prevail in November, Obama said, “Once you are speaker, I would strongly urge that the Democrats put together a framework for a very public conversation, and you can break it out into three or four or five issues.”Obama stressed that the framework should be centered on the reality that the technology can’t be stuffed “back into a box.”“This is something that is moving very fast in private hands, and if we don’t get on top of it, I think can be dangerous. If we do get on top of it, I do think it’s beneficial,” Obama said, laying out examples of AI’s potential use in drug development and finding pathways to a clean energy future.“We don’t want to shut off those opportunities, but we have to understand that this is a tool,” he said.Jeffries agreed with the former president in a statement provided to CNN on Sunday.“President Obama is correct that decisive action must be taken on Artificial Intelligence,” he said, adding, “In the majority, we will move urgently on this issue with a legislative response that recognizes the importance of American companies continuing to lead in the Artificial Intelligence area, while putting in place meaningful guardrails that protect the American people from bad actors and the very real damage that can be done to humanity.”Jeffries also accused Republicans of having “abdicated their responsibility to govern” and said Democrats “will not repeat their error.”A source familiar with Obama’s thinking said the former president sees Amodei’s letter and similar reaction from other tech moguls as an encouraging development.But President Donald Trump waved off their concerns, saying he is not worried about any existential threat posed by AI, focusing instead on the US winning in its development of the technology over China.“We’re leading China in AI. We’re the most sophisticated country in the world, and frankly, I want to keep it that way,” Trump said to reporters at the Amgen Irish Open on Sunday.About the concerns expressed by Democrats and others over the technology, the president said, “I think you have a lot of negative forces that are bringing it up that shouldn’t be bringing it up, and they’re bringing up things that won’t happen.”One of Trump’s top economic advisers, Kevin Hassett, also rejected the calls for slowing the technology down, saying on Sunday the bigger concern is a scenario in which a “malevolent actor has access to an AI that’s better than the one we have that can protect us.”Hassett, the National Economic Council director, said on “State of the Union” the White House may hold meetings this week about addressing Amodei’s concerns, but he did not specify whether Trump had floated greater safeguards.“I have concerns that if we don’t win AI, we’re going to be put in a very bad position,” Hassett said. “We are leading China right now.”CNN’s Alison Main and Molly English contributed to this report.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.THE-CNN-WIRE (TM) & © 2026 CABLE NEWS NETWORK, INC., A TIME WARNER COMPANY. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Top Lawmakers Agree A.I.’s Risks Are Rising but Say They Have No Quick Fix
House Speaker Mike Johnson warned on Sunday of competitive risks from China, and Hakeem Jeffries, the minority leader, said Congress should start regulatory talks this week.
Futures Loom, Fed Ahead; AI Leaders Urge Slowdown
Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei wants to "slow the pace" of improving advanced AI models. Sam Altman and Elon Musk agree.
Physicists can’t agree on how the Universe works
A massive worldwide survey of physicists has revealed surprisingly little agreement about some of the universe’s biggest mysteries. No majority backed the standard cosmological model, a leading explanation for dark matter, or any single theory of quantum gravity. One area of stronger agreement stood out: 68% said the Big Bang does not necessarily represent the beginning of time. Researchers say the divisions show just how alive and unsettled the frontiers of physics remain.
Dermatologists Agree—This Common Food Is Fantastic for Healthy Skin
Learn why dermatologists recommend tomatoes for healthy skin, including how vitamin C and lycopene may support collagen and skin health.
Springfield business owners say MGM casino, falling short of expectations, has been no jackpot
The would-be love story between MGM Springfield and city officials had been tested for years, but perhaps officially ended when the city filed suit against the company for failing to live up to its host agreement. South End merchants have mixed views of the casino's impact.
Virgil van Dijk's chances of agreeing new Liverpool contract revealed
Andoni Iraola on the sidelines with Virgil van Dijk in action for Liverpool
Sky Sports expert’s verdict on Newcastle United and a struggle to disagree with much of this
The Sky Sports column ‘Jones Knows’ has given some interesting analysis and commentary on what is currently the position at Newcastle United. The column makes predictions on what will happen at certain Premier League matches and also debates other matters/issues at clubs as well.
How the HOPES Program Strengthens Culturally Responsive Mental‑Health Care
"I thought there was no way I could become a doctor. Now I know I can."As I looked around the room, I noticed heads nodding in agreement.That student's reflection wasn't an isolated experience. One by one, others shared similar stories describing how they had questioned whether they belonged in medi...
Texans Make Critical Final C.J. Stroud Decision Before Bills Game
The Houston Texans and C.J. Stroud have come to an agreement about his immediate future ahead of facing the Buffalo Bills. The post Texans Make Critical Final C.J. Stroud Decision Before Bills Game appeared first on HEAVY.
Tucker Kraft signs extension on day before Packers' season opener
Green Bay Packers tight end Tucker Kraft will be making his return from a torn anterior cruciate ligament with a contract extension. The Packers announced Saturday that Kraft had signed a contract extension. The team didn’t disclose terms, but a person familiar with the situation told The Associated Press that it’s a four-year, $75 million deal with a maximum value of $92 million that includes a $26.5 million signing bonus. Kraft could have become a free agent at the end of the season if the two sides hadn’t agreed to terms on an extension, though he consistently expressed throughout the offseason his desire to stay in Green Bay.
Packers, TE Tucker Kraft agree to 4-year contract extension worth up to $92M
The Packers and tight end Tucker Kraft agreed to a four-year, $92 million contract extension on the eve of Week 1.
Packers, Tucker Kraft agree to massive 4-year contract extension
Tucker Kraft and the Packers have agreed to a hefty four-year extension.
Tucker Kraft, Packers reportedly agree to 4-year, $75M contract extension
Kraft was on pace for career numbers last season before tearing his ACL in Week 9.
Michele Padovano agrees with Spalletti on giving Kolo Muani time
Luciano Spalletti has publicly asked for more from Randal Kolo Muani, but the manager has also made it clear that he is not giving up on the misfiring Frenchman.Juve invested significant time and mone...
Notes: MLB expansion, position players pitching, 2028 Olympics
One aspect of the upcoming labor battle this offseason, after the collective bargaining agreement expires on December 1, is Major League Baseballs desire to expand from 30 to 32 teams. MLB’s last expansion was in 1998, and Jeff Passan at ESPN in his outline of potential new cities notes that commissioner Rob Manfred wants the […]
Germany’s Political Tailspin: Your Weekly SPIEGEL Recap
It might be tempting to dismiss the results of last Sunday’s state election in Saxony-Anhalt, in which the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party raked in 43.8 percent of the vote, as a rather unimportant extremist blip in a state that hardly anyone can find on the map. And you wouldn’t necessarily be wrong to do so. The state’s population – around 2.1 million – is a mere 2.5 percent of the German total. And while the state capital of Magdeburg was once the political heart of the Holy Roman Empire back when Otto the Great used to hang out there (more than a millenium … no … milennium … nope … millennium ago), it is today something of a backwater, albeit one with a ginormous cathedral in its center. We wanted to briefly interrupt this week’s newsletter to extend a heartfelt thank you to all of our subscribers, both new and old. And to remind you all that a free subscription gets you access to this newsletter every Saturday. A paid subscription, by contrast, gets you one DER SPIEGEL article every weekday, delivered to your inbox. We strive to select pieces that both demonstrate what Europe’s leading newsmagazine has to offer and provide an international audience – namely, you – with an insight into how Germany and Europe view the world. If you haven’t already signed up for a paid subscription, please consider doing so if you can. Our Substack channel relies entirely on reader support and we are excited to continue offering you the best of DER SPIEGEL. Subscribe But even beyond the fact that a huge percentage of the voters in the state decided to place an X next to a party with an ideological lineage that runs rather directly back to the right-wing extremist soup out of which the Nazi Party was born, the results are a perfect example of a phenomenon that has been plaguing German elections in recent years: the lack of an obvious path to a majority. Call it the Balkanization of German politics. There are a number of developments driving the phenomenon, but for the purposes of this newsletter, here are two of the most salient: Persistent voter frustration with the country’s two (former) big-tent parties – the Christian Democrats (CDU) on the center-right (17.2 percent in Saxony-Anhalt last Sunday) and the Social Democrats (SPD) on the center-left (9.3 percent). The presence of parties on the far left (Left Party), the populist left (the Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance – BSW) and the far right (AfD) with which mainstream parties are reluctant to form coalitions. So what happens now? Stories of the Week A Lack of Leadership The answer for many people in the country, and particularly within the CDU, is clear: pin (some of) the blame on Chancellor Friedrich Merz. According to a survey taken directly after the election in Saxony-Anhalt, 88 percent of respondents agreed with the statement that if the federal government in Berlin were doing a better job, the AfD wouldn’t be as strong. And it is true that the predominant impression of the federal government ever since Merz was sworn in on May 6, 2025, is one of ineffectiveness and bickering. His rather unique combination of bumbling-plus-bravado has also not exactly endeared him to the German public. Indeed, his standing in the country is so shaky that his popularity – according to recent polls – has now dropped even below the historic lows associated with his predecessor Olaf Scholz. The situation is such that the CDU even opted to keep him largely out of the campaign ahead of the Saxony-Anhalt vote. And since then, dissatisfied rumblings within the CDU have grown louder. DER SPIEGEL’s Swantje Karich notes that the problems with the CDU go much deeper than Merz. “The center-right has a trust problem. At a press appearance following the devastating election result in Saxony-Anhalt, Friedrich Merz said that the party wanted to ‘reach people more effectively’ through ‘emotional engagement.’ It sounded as though he were announcing a political program. On the basis of that statement, it is difficult to take his empathy seriously.” “The Chancellor’s chastened appearance did, at least, reveal where he stands: with his back to the wall. Elections will be held in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania next week, and the CDU could fare even worse there. The party is polling at between 8 and 10 percent in the state.” “What is at stake is the political tradition that has lent stability to the Federal Republic since 1945: a democratic conservatism that understands what must be preserved, but also how to embrace progress and openness to the world. If the Union continues along its current path, it risks becoming politically irrelevant after the 2029 federal election – and Germany could soon find itself with a government of the far right.” The Trumpification of Political Debate? It is often said in Germany that to understand the political and social trends that will soon be dominant in Europe, one need only look across the Atlantic to the United States. When it comes to political debate, that has certainly proven true. Donald Trump understood early on that triggering mouth-foaming outrage among Democrats is an ideal way to both generate headlines and to secure loyalty among supporters. And he realized that far more quickly than the left side of the political spectrum understood that simply ignoring the old man might be the best recipe. To be sure, there have been signs recently that the US president may be over-relying on the strategy. Earlier this week, in an apparent grandpa-discovers-AI moment, Trump sent out 60 posts in the space of 10 hours, many of them AI-assisted images portraying him as a hero – or showing Iceland as part of the US (outrageous!!!). It was also during that slew of schlock that he explicitly backed the AfD with an “MGGA” post. In Germany, though, the outrage cycle remains in full swing, with much of the focus on those who would dare to vote for the AfD. They are alternately portrayed as being dim-witted, ungrateful, backward, racist or all of the above. That, argues DER SPIEGEL columnist Sabine Rennefanz, is not particularly helpful. “Everywhere on election night, people spoke of a watershed moment, a rupture, a turning point. But what is that supposed to mean in concrete terms? A watershed would imply an interruption, a moment of pause – perhaps even a willingness to rethink and learn. At first, there was little sign of that in the main television panels. Instead, the familiar rituals that had already shaped the election campaign continued: outrage, lecturing and abuse.” “That’s just the tone, one might object. They’re only talk shows. Given that the party’s state branch has been classified by domestic intelligence officials as confirmed right-wing extremist, there are more important problems than hurt feelings on television. Yet although the condescending tone is not the cause of the AfD’s success, it is an expression of the broader mood within the so-called political center – a kind of institutional blindness that too often treats material concerns as a communications problem.” “People have a pretty good sense of whether you like them – whether you approach them with curiosity or merely study, lecture and manage them as a problem group. They notice whether you genuinely want to understand their fears and pain, or whether you are simply waiting for the chance to correct them. They can also tell whether someone still has the energy to change things, or whether they have barricaded themselves behind platitudes and empty phrases.” “Anyone who wants an egalitarian democratic society cannot promise equality only to those whose language, tastes and moral convictions they share. They must also acknowledge the wounds, resentments and fears of those whose political conclusions they consider wrong. Acknowledging them does not mean agreeing with them. But a democracy that communicates with almost half its citizens only through warnings and labels gives up on political debate before it has even begun. An atmosphere must be created in which people can express their opinions without fearing that they will be canceled. We are currently a long way from that.” East-West? One of the clear undercurrents in the election last Sunday was, of course, Germany’s ongoing east-west divide, particularly as it pertains to the success of the AfD. Historically, the party has been far stronger in the former East German states than in former West German states. The fact that this generalization no longer reliably holds is certainly one of the primary concerns that many have about the party’s growth. And yet, there is still a distinct flavor of “stupid easterners, they don’t understand democracy” to the coverage. In the weeks before the vote, there was even a rather interesting back-and-forth in Germany’s culture pages about how ungrateful eastern Germans allegedly are for being pulled out of their pre-reunification backwardness and into the light of the West. DER SPIEGEL’s Jochen-Martin Gutsch has had enough. “Ten years ago, in 2016, elections were also held in Saxony-Anhalt. The AfD won more than 20 percent, which at the time rightly provoked outrage and incomprehension in western Germany. Today, in 2026, the AfD is also polling at around 20 percent in western German states, but this no longer provokes outrage and incomprehension. Instead, it is now regarded as proof of democratic conviction and civilizational resistance. After all, in the east, it’s 40 percent!” “This allows people to continue feeling morally superior to the East, but the wiser course would be to admit: if something doesn’t happen soon, the West will turn AfD-blue too. Or bluish.” “But will anything happen? The truly depressing thing about election night was not so much the AfD leaders intoxicated by their own success. It was the representatives of the other parties, who once again said that they were utterly shocked, needed some time to digest the result and would, of course, not simply return to business as usual. The SPD, a former big-tent party, celebrated its ‘stable’ result of 9.3 percent. Congratulations!” “For 10 years, the AfD has gone from one electoral success to the next. And still, the established parties remain ‘shocked’ and scratch their heads in astonishment. How long can they keep being shocked? Friedrich Merz says he may need to communicate his reform ideas in a more ‘emotional’ way. So the CDU’s political professionals sit down together after the election, mull over a strategy, and in the end come up with this: Fritz, try to be a little more relaxed, charismatic and emotional – or something. Beyond that: no political plan, no defiance, no promise of a future. That is frightening.” What was good, what was bad for democracy? Good: Voter turnout in Saxony-Anhalt was 77.8 percent, the highest ever recorded in the state. Whatever one thinks of the result, that figure is encouraging. Democracy needs citizens to take an interest. Bad: Although a strong AfD result had been expected in Saxony-Anhalt, many politicians from the mainstream parties – including in Berlin – appeared confused, helpless and overwhelmed in their initial reactions. That is not how they will win back voters’ trust. Last Week’s Highlights: 🗳️ Meet the Germans Who Voted for the AfD: Why would voters in a country like Germany, with its Nazi past, vote for a right-wing party? It’s a question only an editor in Berlin could come up with. On the ground, the view is different. 🟦 How the AfD Wants to Expand Its Power Across Germany: The far-right AfD is planning to decimate public broadcasting in Saxony-Anhalt, revamp education and install extremists in positions of power. And it is eyeing victory on the national stage as well. 🕯️ The Continuing Reverberations of September 11: It was a generational shock, and the consequences can still be felt today - from massive surveillance and significant increases in presidential power to violent excesses at ICE. 🤝 “For Europe, Canada Is the Preferred Partner in Trans-Atlantic Relations”: In an interview with DER SPIEGEL, Canadian Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne discusses his country’s failed trade deal with the US and why Canada is looking to Europe. 🏛️ The True Historical Roots of the AfD: During the Weimar Republic in the 1920s, there were numerous parties on the extreme right espousing “Germany first” nationalism. The Nazis may not be the best comparison for today’s AfD. 🌊 AfD in a Landslide: Merz Is the Wrong Leader for Germany: The right-wing Alternative for Germany won in a landslide in Saxony-Anhalt state elections on Sunday. What does that mean for the country at large? Thank you for your continued support and have a wonderful week! Subscribe Share Leave a comment Your SPIEGEL Substack Team Compiled and edited by Charles Hawley
I let my 15-year-old fly home alone from Europe; it didn't go smoothly
I booked an extended family trip to Spain, but my teenage daughter complained it was too long. I reluctantly agreed to let her fly home alone.
BRICS agrees on joint declaration before New Delhi summit, sources say
The BRICS group of emerging economies has agreed on a joint declaration, sources told Reuters on Saturday, hours before its leaders began a summit in New Delhi, aiming to boost the bloc's global clout.
The politics and possibilities of ‘AI could kill us all’
I found myself fielding a lot of questions from folks who don’t usually talk much about AI this week. They were mostly along the lines of “do you think AI is going to kill us all?” or “how worried should I be about this human extinction stuff?” Motivating this wave of existential anxiety was the highly dramatic resignation of now-former Anthropic employee Jacob Coxon, who quit his job while publicly sharing his concerns about safety practices at the leading AI companies. More specifically, he declared that almost everyone at OpenAI and Anthropic, the leading AI labs, believes that there’s a decent chance the AI systems they’re producing could “kill us all” by the end of the decade, and the companies aren’t “acting responsibly.” Other AI safety researchers, including those still employed at Anthropic and OpenAI, all confirmed that yes, Coxon is correct, they’re all worried that their company’s products might prove fatal for the entire human race as well. Two more AI employees quit and joined the chorus. Now, the warning shot has been covered everywhere from the Wall Street Journal to Fox News to WIRED to the Guardian. I understand why all this sounds scary, but my response to those who have asked, has generally been: No, you don’t need to worry that AI will kill go rogue and kill us all. But that does not mean we shouldn’t worry, period. Far from it. The companies building AI products are now among the wealthiest and most powerful entities in the world. And they very much are building enormous engines of mass surveillance, extraction, and automation. They can and have allowed their AI systems to carry out felony hacks of other companies, provided the government with autonomously generated kill lists, and sold enterprise technology to firms around the world that is explicitly intended to replace jobs. But “AI” has done these things not because they have all-powerful minds of their own but, ultimately, because people have programmed, calibrated, and directed them to. In other words, it’s not AI we need to worry the most about. It’s the people and corporations working to profit from and gain power by deploying it. The technology is sophisticated, sure, and, especially in cybersecurity contexts, potentially disruptive to plenty of existing systems. But if we want to stop this predatory, profiteering, and extractive form of AI—and it’s worth noting that at this point, most people do—we absolutely can. A quick note/plea: I can only do all of this with the support of readers like you, so if you find value in independent, critical tech journalism and analysis, please consider becoming a paid subscriber. I want to keep as much of this un-paywalled as absolutely possible, and I need your support to do so. Many thanks to all who continue to chip in, it’s very much appreciated. Onward. Subscribe First, some context: AI industry folks like Coxon have been discussing the prospect that AI will destroy humanity for years. Even before the beginning of the AI boom, many working in the industry, from the executive staff to the rank and file researchers, have obsessed over ‘x-risk’, or the possibility that AI will become sentient or semi-sentient and move one way or another to exterminate humanity. This is ostensibly why Elon Musk bankrolled OpenAI in the first place, and is the grounds for his lawsuit alleging OpenAI betrayed its charter by abandoning its nonprofit status to become a commercial enterprise. Many AI engineers and startup founders have calculated their own personal p(doom), or the probability that the tech product they are working on will initiate an actual humanity-extinguishing apocalypse. 10-25% p(doom)s are pretty common. (I wrote about a long weekend I spent among these folks at one of their top conferences here, to give you an idea of their ideas and belief systems.) Sam Altman himself drove the narrative of the imminent rise of a super-powerful AI, or artificial general intelligence, to prominence by declaring that the technology he was building posed an existential risk to humanity. This idea is in other words baked into the DNA of modern AI companies and into the products they engineer. It’s also why the industry is routinely accused, by myself and others, of “doom marketing,” ie, using such proclamations and framings to impart the sheer power of the technology behind your product onto investors, partners, consumers, and the state. Some ambient understanding of this tendency may have helped prevent the press from repeating the claim every time one of the x-risk folks made it over the years, including when they quit their jobs at AI companies while doing so. Yet Coxon’s AI x-risk alarm has broken containment, as they say, and has exposed the idea to the mainstream media once again. This has happened, I think, for a number of reasons. First, when AI CEOs were going around saying AI might kill everyone in 2023, their companies were well-capitalized, but not nearly to the extent they are today. They were more easily dismissed as eccentric geeks of the sort that Silicon Valley is supposed to produce. Now, not only do their products have much greater market saturation, but people are more aware of a) the often unethical ways the executives and companies comport themselves b) the other adverse impacts of AI that have already arrived, and c) the physical cost of building these systems, particularly when it comes to data centers. Finally, toss in the constant stream of headlines in 2026 about AI models going rogue or potentially upending the world’s infrastructure. [ ](https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/with-the-backlash-to-data-centers) [ With the backlash to data centers, Flock and AI glasses, a mass opposition to big tech is underway. Silicon Valley is in denial. ](https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/with-the-backlash-to-data-centers) Brian Merchant · Aug 27 [ Read full story ](https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/with-the-backlash-to-data-centers) As a result, general sentiment was already overwhelmingly skeptical of AI and its overlords, so the table was pretty well set for someone to come along and say ‘just a reminder, the companies that are building the product that promises to take your job and leave a data center in your neighborhood also think that it might exterminate the human race’ and get a strong reaction from the media and the public. The question is: Should we understand this stuff as hype, strategically fanned to feed already swelling valuations? Is it doom marketing? Genuine cause for alarm that the infrastructure that undergirds modern life is facing a novel threat vector? Or reason to be sincerely worried that AI companies are amassing too much power, and that their products are genuinely dangerous? The answer, I’m afraid, is “yes.” Let me try to untangle all of this a bit, because arguments over how to navigate this moment are extremely heated right now, as they are essentially arguments over how to approach the politics of AI at a moment where there may be a unique opening for action. Those sympathetic to AI alignment concerns and x risk arguments—which increasingly includes a faction on the left who want to shut down AI over safety concerns—argue that people who dismiss AI as all hype have their heads in the sand. Meanwhile, critics of the x-risk narrative—which I might note includes a cadre of investors and tech folks on the right, too—argue that it is hype and can be used to further inflate valuations or for pursuing regulatory capture. The challenge is that many feel that dismissing AI as just hype or purely marketing also diminishes the urgency of taking on the AI industry as the novel and threat to labor, civil society, and the public sphere it is; others that by accepting the industry’s own terms, we imbue it with undue power and enable it. But let’s be clear: Declarations that AI is so powerful it might end the world are a kind of marketing, and anyone who says otherwise is just as off base as those who say that’s all that it is. If you don’t think that these sub-trillion dollar companies have higher-ups who noticed that when their founders talked about super-powerful dangerous AI they got spikes in media interest and phone calls from investors, or that those founders didn’t notice that themselves, and lean into certain narratives to advantage their products, then I don’t know what to tell you. Not all marketing is a Pepsi ad campaign with a celebrity spokesperson. Yet confronting the AI industry should certainly be considered an urgent project. Do I share the x-riskers’ fear that out-of-control, super-intelligent AI agents might end the world? I do not. I’ve read a good deal of AI extinction literature over the last couple of years and I have not come across a credible, step-by-step documentation of how exactly AI might move from self-recursively improving AI to killing every single human on the planet. Most of what I’ve read seems predicated on a sort of reverse Ian Malcolmian logic: Eventually, it becomes smart enough and AI, uh, finds a way (to exterminate humanity). Are the AI companies also overstating and dramatizing what their products can do? Yes, pretty much all the time. They’re in a knife fight for market share and are trying to win customers and government contracts before their investors come knocking. And yet. They have concentrated enormous amounts of compute, have extensive data collection and surveillance capacities, have inserted themselves into the state in numerous capacities, including military kill chains, and they are being run by egomaniacal billionaires who are rushing to monopolize an entire new market. The way I think about their most recent frightening-seeming exploits is not as a “swarm of rogue AI agents building a new civilization” or whatever, but as corporations with a hitherto-unimaginable amount of compute at their disposal recklessly experimenting with automation programs, completely unafraid of any repercussions because we have been unwilling or unable to impose any on them. So I think we should welcome any newfound imperative to hold them accountable. I also think that ultimately, the AI critics, Pause AI folks, leftists, doomers, effective altruists, and, honestly, most of the public, want a lot of the same things: legitimate checks and limits on AI companies’ power, actual transparency into what the companies are doing, and for more of AI to be under public control. (Ultimately, a lot of what animates the x-risk fears are rooted in just that: a fear of losing control.) How we move towards all this, exactly, is the question of the day, and while there’s much to be argued over in terms of building a viable political platform to challenge the AI industry’s power, I do want to cast a vote against one particular approach. Not to pick on Chris here, as there are a lot of folks out there proposing stuff like this, and the policy ideas actually stem from AI safety groups. But not only would this be challenging to land politically (I can already hear the ‘China will beat us to AGI’ calls) and all but unworkable in practice, this approach is a) far too limiting, b) fails to address the current harms caused by AI and c) would likely only wind up serving Anthropic and OpenAI; it’s what regulatory capture looks like in action. Full model transparency is the floor for what should be on offer here. If these companies believe their products will kill us, the very least we deserve is to know how. It’s in the public interest. I would also argue we might get a lot of the way to stopping any currently envisioned robot apocalypse simply by forcing AI companies to assume liability, and to submit to the full brunt of the law. If Sam Altman were liable to be charged with a felony for approving the hack on Hugging Face1, if Google was forced to pay defamation fines each time it published a false and injurious AI Overviews, these companies might suddenly find cause to restrain their models’ output, and we might hear less about rogue AI. We would need to introduce new frameworks and available tools for tracking automated lawbreaking, to be sure, but I’d wager that little would frighten the AI companies more than actually being held accountable for what their products enable. To that end, Illinois has passed an AI liability law, which the industry fought tooth and nail, and Florida is considering one. The next steps would be towards moving AI under public control; again, it’s only reasonable, since everyone, not just AI insiders, should get a say over how a technology whose developers say might kill us is developed and deployed. Dismantling the whole industrial project as currently structured should be on the table, too, pending democratic input. But that’s for another post. For now, suffice to say that while I won’t be losing any sleep about an AI-enabled extinction event, Mr. Coxon and co. have given us an opportunity to underscore the urgency of the clear and present damage AI companies are doing, the extreme power they wield and the extent to which they hold themselves unaccountable, and the abundance of political capital there is out there for taking them on. Subscribe 1 Purely speculative! I do not know if he did or not.
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Minnesota Vikings CB Isaiah Rodgers agreed to a restructured contract
Family therapist reveals how couples can keep politics from wrecking relationships
Dr. Anna Elton discusses why partisan disagreements can create tension between partners, and offers strategies for setting boundaries, staying curious and reconnecting after heated conversations.
Vikings, CB Isaiah Rodgers agree to revised contract
The Vikings and cornerback Isaiah Rodgers agreed to a revised contract ahead of the 2026 season.
Is Trump's $5,000 pitch to voters legit? Candidates, analysts disagree
Graham says Trump's pitch to give voter $5,000 for a GOP win is "delivering for Americans." Andrews says voters need sound economic policy.
Panthers DL Tershawn Wharton remains sidelined, restructures contract
The seven-year NFL veteran remains sidelined and agreed to help alleviate Carolina's tight salary cap.
GOP and Democratic officials in Nashville unite over renaming airport for Dolly Parton
In Nashville, Tennessee, Republican and Democratic leaders are in an ugly partisan battle over who controls the city's airport, but they agree on one thing | 1080 WTIC NEWSTALK
GOP and Democratic officials in Nashville unite over renaming airport for Dolly Parton
In Nashville, Tennessee, Republican and Democratic leaders are in an ugly partisan battle over who controls the city's airport, but they agree on one thing.
Fabrizio Romano confirms Liverpool cult hero agrees surprise deal
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Baltimore Orioles Part Ways With Front Office Executive
The Baltimore Orioles and now former vice president of player and staff development Matt Blood mutually agreed to part ways on Thursday.
SC television group requiring candidates to sign non-compete clauses for upcoming debate season
Television stations owned by Gray Media are allegedly requiring participants in upcoming debates for governor and U.S. Senate to agree not to work with their competition to participate.
Arsenal confirm deal to sign young forward
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Cosmos Health Secures Additional 2.5 Million Units Under New Five-Year Contract Manufacturing Agreement with Viofar; Total Orderbook Surpasses 27.5 Million Units
* 500,000 contracted units of ROSARTIA annually / 2.5 million over five years through a new long-term agreement at wholly owned subsidiary Cana Laboratories * Expands Cosmos Health's manufacturing presence in cardiovascular pharmaceuticals, adding production of statin-based lipid-lowering therapies to Cana's growing contract manufacturing portfolio * Cumulative contract manufacturing orderbook increases to more than 27.
Analysis | The post-9/11 wars changed politics. Not everyone who served agrees how.
Interviews with two veterans in Congress highlight how the terrorist attacks that sparked wars in Iraq and Afghanistan changed the nation’s politics but did not leave its leaders with monolithic views.
Postpartum politics: What it means to run for government as a new mum
Victorian Greens candidates Nina Crawley and Lini Fernando reflect on their experiences running a political campaign just months after giving birth. From the challenges and compromises to the support networks that wrapped around them, and why showing up vulnerably in public space matters. Subscribe In 2024, when my second child was four months old, I decided to run for local government. Fast forward two years, I am again four months postpartum, with my third child, and this time running in the state election. But this time has hit differently. Going through pregnancy, birth and postpartum while being a political candidate has had a more profound and personal impact than I ever expected. I reached out to my fellow Greens candidate for the state election, Lini Fernando, who gave birth 20 days before me, and her experience closely mirrored mine. Postpartum has its own unique challenges that we’ve not seen reflected in stories about women running for office. When people discuss the “juggle”, they’re usually talking about the practical mechanics of looking after small children - childcare arrangements, pumping schedules and logistics. As mums of multiple children, we were both aware of the logistical changes and difficulties that accompany giving birth and the months after. We assumed that combining this with running for election would be hard, but that we could organise our way out of any problems. What neither of us anticipated was the intense vulnerability that comes with putting yourself into the spotlight of a state election campaign at a time when you are physically exhausted and navigating things like breastfeeding and feeling like a stranger in your own body. There have been challenges that neither of us anticipated. Firstly, needing to buy new clothes because the supportive leggings that are a staple of the postpartum wardrobe weren’t going to cut it for community events. Lini held her first fundraiser - a trivia night - just three weeks postpartum. A business-casual wardrobe, several sizes bigger than pre-baby, was needed, and fast. As women, how we look is closely scrutinised, and the internalised fatphobia is loud. We are conditioned from our earliest days to believe that our appearance is tied to our worth, and taught how we are allowed to show up in public. Women who dare to put themselves into the spotlight also receive more abuse than their male counterparts, including criticism of their appearance. To stand in front of members of your community and try to convince them that you’re the best person to represent them in parliament is a challenge in and of itself. To do it with leaking breasts, a pelvic floor that could betray you at the first sign of a sneeze, a body that still feels unfamiliar, and with half your hair falling out (hello postpartum hair loss!) is another thing altogether. It requires courage, allowing yourself the grace to be vulnerable in public, and the belief that showing up, however imperfectly, matters. And the vulnerability isn’t just physical; it also includes factors like having to ask a campaign team to accommodate the realities of having a baby. Asking for help is hard, and it’s a skill that both new parents and hopeful political candidates need to become comfortable with. Parents understand the disappointment that comes when a call for help or connection is rebuffed, like a friend cancelling a much-needed coffee. That rejection is amplified for political candidates calling dozens of people each week. Many people don’t realise running for Parliament, when you aren’t the incumbent, is a volunteer role supported largely by other volunteers who have to squeeze volunteering in around their paid work. Calls need to be made and meetings held after work hours - usually during “witching hour” (5-8 pm), that special time of night when babies cry for no reason. I found that I was struggling to make these commitments, or having to tap out and ask for them to be rearranged. When I spoke to Lini, we realised that she had had a similar experience, this push-pull of being the candidate and wanting to show our faces at meetings and help recruit new volunteers at ‘calling parties’, but also being the only people who could settle our newborns. Sometimes we could merge the two worlds; Lini and I realised that we had both attended 7:30pm meetings online, sitting in a dark room, struggling though breastfeeding and settling our babies. Although we’re both committed to breaking the stigma around breastfeeding, it can be hard to keep your composure while trying to feed a young baby as they try to latch, spew and fuss. Ultimately, Lini and I agreed that showing up vulnerably in public space matters. Leaders should possess empathy and understanding for those who feel raw and in transition; from the dad who just got evicted to the teen who acquired a disability - anyone who feels they aren’t the version of themselves they expected right now. The patriarchy tries to tell us otherwise, but women shouldn’t have to wait until they’re ‘recovered’, no longer vulnerable, before they feel entitled to participate in public life. In fact, we could all benefit from our leaders being a little more vulnerable. *This piece was cowritten, but has been presented in the first person for the sake of style. About the authors Nina Crawley is former teacher and community organiser who now works in human rights and inequality advocacy for a non-profit. She’s a mother of three keen to get back to running as soon as her pelvic floor allows! She’s contesting the seat of Ivanhoe for the Greens in this year’s state election. Lini Fernando is a lawyer working in diverse areas of law including anti corruption and public law. She’s a mother of two and a gardening and good policy enthusiast. She is currently contesting the seat of Croydon for the Greens in this year’s state election. Thanks for reading Cheek Media Co. ! This post is public so feel free to share it. Share
Fact check: Trump, RFK Jr. and others make false claims on night 2 of GOP convention
(CNN) — President Donald Trump delivered another rapid-fire series of false claims on the second night of Republicans’ midterm convention on Thursday. Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. did his own barrage of wrongness. And various other speakers uttered statements that were untrue, misleading or missing critical context.Here is a fact check of some of the assertions from the final day of the convention. This is not intended as a comprehensive list of Thursday’s falsehoods.Trump’s many false claimsTrump made numerous false claims, some of which he also made in his longer speech Wednesday.Trump claimed that there were “no empty seats” in the Dallas arena as he spoke Thursday, which was visibly untrue. CNN White House correspondent Alayna Treene, who was there, wrote in a live chat right after Trump made the claim that “I’m looking at rows of empty seats” and that “the idea that there are ‘no empty seats’ is just laughably untrue,” though she also said the room was mostly full. Trump has for years made false claims about supposedly never having had an empty seat.Trump further inflated one of his favorite fictional figures, claiming Thursday that “$22 trillion” in investment has come into the US; on Wednesday, he had put it at “over $20 trillion,” and even that lower figure has no apparent basis in reality. As of the time he spoke Thursday, the White House’s own website claimed there had been “$11.2 trillion” in “major investment announcements” this term, not “over $20 trillion,” and the White House figure was itself a major exaggeration of actual investment.Trump, talking about elections, lied that “there’s never been bigger cheaters” than Democrats; there is no basis for broadly describing Democrats as election cheaters. For the second straight night, Trump falsely claimed that the Biden administration allowed “25 million people” to pour into the country, though that number is nowhere close to correct. Trump again falsely claimed that former President Joe Biden and other Democrats “created the worst inflation in American history,” though even peak Biden-era inflation, 9.1% in June 2022, was far from the all-time record of 23.7%; it was a 40-year high, but the rate then fell sharply before Trump returned to office.Trump also baselessly claimed that Democrats would “defund the police” and give “voting rights and welfare to 25 million illegal aliens” if they won the midterms. Republicans will still control the White House in 2027 and 2028 and the president would be in position to veto any such changes if a Democratic-controlled Congress sought to make them, but there is no indication that Democrats want to do so. Also, even groups favoring strict immigration policies estimate that the total undocumented population is far less than “25 million” or even 20 million.As he did Wednesday, Trump claimed the US now has the world’s lowest prescription drug prices. The assertion is so broad that it is unclear what exactly Trump is referencing. But experts told CNN they highly doubt that the prices for brand-name drugs in the US are generally less than they are in other countries, and the Trump administration has not provided details to prove the claim.“It’s tough to claim that you’re getting the lowest prices anywhere in the world and then also not have any evidence to support that,” said Andrew Mulcahy, a senior health economist at RAND, while Diederik Stadig, senior healthcare economist at financial institution ING, said, “To say that the US now has the lowest drug prices in the world is at this moment not true.”And as he did Wednesday, Trump said “more Americans are working today than ever before” – which is true but nearly meaningless, since the number of people working in the US generally rises over time simply because the population rises over time.“There are more Americans working because there are more Americans. That’s the entire analysis,” Justin Wolfers, a University of Michigan professor of public policy and economics, wrote in his newsletter in August.RFK Jr.’s false claims on the pandemic, Trump’s record and moreFalse claim about Democrats and the 2024 electionKennedy unsuccessfully ran for the 2024 Democratic presidential nomination before withdrawing to run as an independent and then eventually endorsing Republican candidate Donald Trump. In Kennedy’s Thursday convention speech, he complained of how the Democrats handled the nomination race.At one point, he said, “For the first time in history, they cancelled their own convention. No voter ever cast a primary ballot for Kamala Harris, no elected delegate was ever consulted; the party of ‘No Kings’ simply anointed a queen.”Kennedy is entitled to express unhappiness about how quickly Democratic leaders coalesced around then-Vice President Harris after Biden unexpectedly dropped out of the race in July 2024, after the primaries were over and less than four months from Election Day. But it’s not true that the party canceled its convention or that delegates didn’t get any say.The convention was held; it was a four-day event in Chicago in August 2024. Democratic convention delegates officially nominated Harris in a virtual roll call vote in advance of the convention. It’s true that Harris was the only candidate on the roll call ballot, but that’s because she was the only candidate who gathered enough delegate signatures to appear on the ballot.It’s clear that party elites’ backing of Harris played a key role in the unusual nomination process. But Kennedy’s specific allegations that the convention was abandoned and delegates were cut out of the process are not true.False claim that Democrats closed ‘every church’ during the Covid-19 pandemicWhile attacking Democrats, Kennedy claimed that, during the Covid-19 pandemic, “They closed every church in our country for a year.”It’s not true that every church in the country was closed for a year, nor even that every church in a Democratic state was closed for a year.Every state issued some type of guidance or order about social distancing during the Covid-19 pandemic, but many states – including some led by Democrats and some led by Republicans – incorporated religious exemptions into those limitations on social interactions.According to a Pew Research Center analysis from April 2020, 15 states allowed religious gatherings to continue without a limit on their size. That set of states included Colorado, Michigan and Pennsylvania, which all had Democratic governors. And at least two states with Republican governors, Alaska and Idaho, were among the states that prohibited religious gatherings at least briefly.False claim that Trump ‘ended nine wars’Trump has repeatedly claimed that he has ended “eight wars.” Kennedy went one higher on Thursday, declaring, “President Trump has ended nine wars.”That’s false. Trump hasn’t even ended eight wars.Trump’s list of eight includes two situations that were never actually wars during his tenure: a diplomatic dispute between Egypt and Ethiopia and a mysterious supposed situation between Serbia and Kosovo. The list also includes a war, involving Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of Congo, that hasn’t actually ended despite a peace agreement brokered by the Trump administration.In addition, the list includes the war between Israel and Hamas, but Israel continues to conduct frequent attacks in Gaza despite a US-brokered ceasefire agreement. And it includes the brief 2025 conflict between Israel and Iran, though Israel proceeded to join the US in starting another war against Iran in 2026.Claim about reversing a decline in longevityKennedy speaking of the Trump administration, claimed Thursday: “We have now reversed a 30-year decline in longevity. “Kennedy referenced preliminary data that he said he had received from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention this week, but it’s unclear what metric of longevity he’s referring to.CDC data shows that US life expectancy had been steadily increasing for decades before a sharp drop during the Covid-19 pandemic. Life expectancy had already started to rebound in 2022, under the Biden administration, and reached a new record high in 2024 before Trump’s second term began.Preliminary data shared by the CDC in July suggests that life expectancy probably hit another record high in 2025.CNN has reached out to HHS for clarification on Kennedy’s comments.Claim that Democrats ‘lost 360,000 children’Speaking about Democrats, Kennedy said: “They somehow lost 360,000 children and they turned our federal government into the biggest child trafficking operation in world history.”Trump and other Republicans have made similar claims. But there’s no basis for the assertion that Democrats “lost” so many children or that the federal government was engaged in human trafficking.A 2024 report from the inspector general for the Department of Homeland Security said Immigration and Customs Enforcement had reported that more than 32,000 unaccompanied migrant children failed to appear as scheduled for immigration court hearings after being released or transferred out of custody between fiscal years 2019 and 2023 – a period that, notably, includes two years and four months under the first Trump administration. The report also said that 291,000 unaccompanied migrant children during this period were not given notices to appear in court.The report said that ICE had “no assurances” these children “are safe from trafficking, exploitation, or forced labor.” But it did not say all the children were actually “lost” and did not definitively assert that any of them were trafficked – let alone that the government was somehow involved in a trafficking operation. And, again, the report spanned parts of both a Republican administration and a Democratic administration.Aaron Reichlin-Melnick, senior fellow at the American Immigration Council, told CNN in 2024: “Long story short, no, there are not 320,000 kids missing. 32,000 kids missed court. That doesn’t mean they’re missing, it means they missed court (either because their sponsor didn’t bring them or they are teenagers who didn’t want to show up). The remaining 291,000 cases mentioned by the (Office of the Inspector General) are cases where ICE hasn’t filed the paperwork to start their immigration court cases.”Vance on inflation, crime and taxes on Social SecurityA false claim about the media and Biden-era inflationVice President JD Vance mocked the media during part of his speech on Thursday. But he made a false claim about Biden-era inflation while lampooning how the media supposedly challenged him over another false claim on that subject.Vance said: “The president and I would go during a campaign, we’d say, ‘You know, inflation is as high as it’s been in 100 years,’ and the fake news would say, ‘No, no, no, it’s as high as it’s been in 68 years.’ That ain’t good, ladies and gentlemen.”Mainstream journalists, at least, wouldn’t say that inflation under Biden was as high as it had been “in 68 years.” Rather, CNN and others noted that peak inflation under the Biden administration, 9.1% in June 2022, was the highest in about 40 years.Vance is entitled to make his general point that this correction still doesn’t make Biden-era inflation sound good, but his specific number was, again, wrong. And he didn’t acknowledge that inflation fell sharply under Biden after hitting the 40-year high, declining to 2.9% in Biden’s last full month in office, December 2024, and 3.0% in January 2025, when Trump and Vance were inaugurated.The rate was 3.4% in July 2026, the most recent month for which data is available.Trump didn’t end taxes on Social SecurityVance claimed, “We’ve ended taxes on Social Security.” Several other convention speakers, including Rep. Lisa McClain of Michigan, Rep. Ryan Mackenzie of Pennsylvania and Ohio House candidate Derek Merrin, similarly said the administration has achieved “no tax on Social Security.”It hasn’t. The big domestic policy bill Trump signed in 2025 did create an additional, temporary $6,000-per-year tax deduction for individuals age 65 and older (which phases out for individuals earning $75,000 per year or more), but as the White House has implicitly acknowledged, millions of Social Security recipients will continue to pay taxes on their benefits even before the temporary new deduction expires after 2028.The Social Security Administration said in 2025 that “the bill ensures that nearly 90% of Social Security beneficiaries will no longer pay federal income taxes on their benefits.Claim about violent crime rate under BidenWhile criticizing the Biden administration, Vice President JD Vance claimed Thursday that the US “became a country where violent crime exploded, unless, of course, you could afford private security.”But violent crime did not explode under Biden. In fact, as FactCheck.org reported last month, data collected and published by the FBI shows that the national violent crime rate was at a lower level in 2023 and 2024, the last two full calendar years of Biden’s term, than it was in 2020, the last full calendar year of Trump’s first term. The year 2020 was highly unusual in many ways – violent crime jumped amid the Covid-19 pandemic – but Biden nonetheless left office with violent crime lower than it was when he took over. In fact, the 2024 violent crime rate was even lower than the 2019 rate under Trump before the pandemic.There was an increase in violent crime during the earlier part of Biden’s term. But given the subsequent decline, it’s misleading at best to claim violent crime “exploded” with no further context.Asked earlier this month about Trump’s similar previous claims to have reversed a Biden-era upswing in violence, crime data expert Jeff Asher said in an email: “No, crime began dropping significantly in 2023 during the Biden administration. Murder fell at record rates in 2023, 2024 and 2025 and, while 2026 may not feature a record decline nationally, it is still on track to see a sizable double-digit decline this year. Violent crime similarly fell nationally in 2023 and 2024, though the drops were more muted than the decline that was recorded by the FBI in 2025.”Other GOP speakersMike Johnson’s false claim about the inflation Republicans inherited from BidenSome other speakers at the convention took aim at inflation under Biden. House Speaker Mike Johnson claimed that “Republicans inherited from the Biden administration record-high inflation.”That’s not true. The inflation rate was 2.9% in Biden’s last full month in office, December 2024, and 3.0% in January 2025, when Trump took over. That’s lower than the most recent rate, 3.4% in July 2026, and nowhere close to the all-time record of 23.7%, which was reached in 1920, or the highest point of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, 14.8%, which was reached in 1980.Johnson correctly said moments later that inflation reached “a 40-year high of 9.1% inflation” under Biden. But a 40-year high is not an all-time record. More importantly, Johnson didn’t explain that 9.1% was much higher than the rate Trump inherited or that the 9.1% rate occurred in June 2022, with roughly two-and-a-half years left in Biden’s term.The cumulative increase in prices from the beginning of the Biden administration to the end was also not the highest in US history. Federal figures show that beginning-to-end inflation under Biden was less than half of that during Carter’s term.What Johnson left out of his claim about a congressional resolutionWhile attacking Democrats as extreme, Johnson said: “Just last week, nearly every Democrat in the House of Representatives voted against condemning socialism and Marxism. They voted against it.”But the resolution didn’t use the word “Marxism.” And Johnson didn’t mention that the resolution wasn’t only about condemning socialism. Rather, it contained other language that Democratic leadership said was the focus of the party’s opposition to the resolution.The resolution’s first provision said it “condemns and denounces socialism in all its forms, including the Democratic Socialists of America, and opposes the implementation of socialist policies in the United States.” But its fifth provision said it “calls for enactment of the SAVE America Act,” Trump’s favored elections bill, which contains various provisions opposed by many Democrats.So while it’s very possible many Democrats would have opposed the resolution even without its expression of support for the SAVE America Act, the call to pass this elections bill served as a poison pill that ensured most Democrats wouldn’t support it.“House Resolution 1490 explicitly calls for enactment of the so-called SAVE America Act, which is the top legislative priority of far-right extremists,” Democratic House leader Hakeem Jeffries said in a statement last week.A New Mexico candidate left out key context in an attack on his opponentGreg Cunningham, a Republican House candidate in New Mexico, used some of his Thursday speech to criticize his Democratic opponent, Rep. Gabe Vasquez. Cunningham said of Vasquez: “He even voted against a resolution honoring the sacrifices and service of the brave men and women in law enforcement who protect, every day, our communities.”But Cunningham left out important context about the resolution. While its focus was expressing support for law enforcement, its preamble contained statements praising the Trump administration and criticizing “leftist activists,” “progressive politicians” and “sanctuary city policies” for allegedly making law enforcement less safe.In other words, a House member might vote against such a resolution, as the vast majority of Democrats did, because they disagreed with conservative components of it, not the general expressions of support for law enforcement. (CNN has reached out to Vasquez’s campaign and House office for comment on his vote.) It’s common for parties to write resolutions in a way that would make it difficult for opponents to support but would open those opponents to campaign attacks if they voted “no.”An Ohio candidate’s misleading attack about Democrats and votingMerrin, the Republican candidate running against Democratic Rep. Marcy Kaptur for a House seat in Ohio, claimed in his speech, “While Democrats talk about letting illegal immigrants vote in our election, Republicans fight for proof of citizenship, photo ID and fair elections.”It’s a big country, so it’s possible some Democrat somewhere is talking about letting undocumented people vote in some election. But Merrin’s claim is misleading at best. There is no proposal from Democrats in Congress to let undocumented people vote in the 2026 midterms – the election Merrin appeared to be referring to when he said “our election” – or vote in future federal elections.CNN has reached out to Merrin’s campaign for an explanation of his claim.House Majority Leader Steve Scalise invoked a similar theme in his speech Wednesday, claiming that Democrats had voted last week “to allow illegals to vote in our federal elections.” But there was no congressional vote on letting undocumented immigrants vote in any elections.Rather, there was a vote on the non-binding Republican resolution that included multiple provisions, including one that “reiterates the notion that American elections are for American citizens only,” one supporting Trump’s favored elections bill and one denouncing socialism.Opposing that multi-clause resolution doesn’t necessarily mean someone supports voting by any non-citizens, let alone non-citizens in the country illegally.This article has been updated with additional items.CNN’s Deja Oliver contributed to this report.The-CNN-Wire™ & © 2026 Cable News Network, Inc., a Warner Bros. Discovery Company. All rights reserved.
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