When the U.S. and Israel launched their war on Iran, it put as many as 1 million Americans living in the Middle East at risk. Many found themselves stranded in an expanding war zone by a government without a plan, much less the personnel and expertise, to rescue them.

That’s because the Trump administration fired hundreds of key State Department personnel with the skills needed to safeguard U.S. citizens abroad and usher them from harm’s way, lawmakers say. These foreign service officers — who lost their jobs amid Elon Musk’s purge of the federal workforce — contacted members of Congress last month with dire warnings about the department’s inability to manage the ongoing crisis.

“The Department is actively preventing experienced, cleared, available officers from helping American citizens in crisis,” a group of nearly 250 mostly mid-career and senior State Department foreign service officers wrote in a letter sent to lawmakers that was shared exclusively with The Intercept. “The crisis now unfolding in the Middle East is, in part, a foreseeable consequence of this and other short-sighted decisions taken by this administration to undermine the federal bureaucracy by eliminating expertise and politicizing our apolitical workforce.”

They added: “The expertise required to manage the current crisis has been systematically removed.”

The former Central Intelligence Agency director John Brennan has added his name to growing calls for the president to be ousted on grounds that he is unfit for the job, arguing that the US constitution’s 25th amendment addressing involuntary removal from office was “written with Donald Trump in mind”.

Brennan, who served as head of the spy agency during Barack Obama’s presidency, told MS Now on Saturday that Trump’s recent volatile remarks about destroying Iranian civilization and the danger he posed to so many lives merited his removal from the Oval Office.

“This person is clearly unhinged,” he said. “I think the 25th amendment was written with Donald Trump in mind.”

Brennan added that Trump was too much of a liability to be allowed to continue to be commander in chief. He had immense firepower at his disposal, including the US nuclear arsenal.

"Effective immediately, the United States Navy, the Finest in the World, will begin the process of BLOCKADING any and all Ships trying to enter, or leave, the Strait of Hormuz," said Trump, who is strongly opposed to the idea of Iran charging ships a toll to pass through the strait.

"I have also instructed our Navy to seek and interdict every vessel in International Waters that has paid a toll to Iran. No one who pays an illegal toll will have safe passage on the high seas," he said.

Young people have grown increasingly skeptical of artificial intelligence, even those who use it daily, according to a new Gallup poll of more than 1,500 people aged 14 to 29.

There is no decline in AI use among Gen Zers, but there is also no increase since the same poll was conducted in 2025. The latest poll found that AI use was plateauing among young users, accompanied by rising concern about the technology’s consequences.

The findings are significant because Gen Z is “the generation most likely to enter or grow within the workforce over the next decade,” the report notes, meaning that their adoption could determine the trajectory of broader societal AI adoption. Gen Z has already overtaken Boomers in the workforce. Right now, the AI world is preparing for a massive jump in expected demand, and the top tech and financial companies are investing billions upon billions of dollars into building out the supply. Experts have warned that if demand does not pan out exactly as expected in the short term, then it could have disastrous consequences for the economy.

xAI’s rapid expansion in Memphis (including a newly announced $659 million investment to grow its supercomputer facility) is being framed as a transformative economic opportunity. But that expansion is not confined to Memphis. It is part of a broader regional footprint that now stretches just across the state line into Southaven, Mississippi, where officials have approved the use of gas turbines to power xAI’s operations despite significant public opposition. What’s happening in Mississippi is not separate from Memphis — it is an extension of the same strategy. The corporation aims to scale production wherever regulation is flexible and resistance can be managed. Taken together, these developments reveal a pattern that is all too familiar in historically Black Memphis communities like Whitehaven and Westwood: Massive corporate investment is presented as progress, while the environmental, health, and long-term economic risks are minimized, obscured, or outright ignored.

Recent findings from the Environmental Protection Agency indicate that the Memphis facility has been operating without required air pollution permits, raising serious concerns about air quality and regulatory compliance. When a corporation of this scale is found to be out of compliance with environmental protections, it is not simply a bureaucratic issue — it is a public health issue. It is about what people breathe, what children are exposed to, and what long-term risks are quietly accumulating in neighborhoods that already face disproportionate environmental burdens.

Moreover, if even a federal regulatory body operating under a deregulatory political climate is raising concerns, then it is reasonable to ask whether the full extent of the harm is being adequately measured or adequately disclosed.

Prices are rising for many Americans, with 65% of consumers saying the increases are outpacing their income, according to a J.D. Power survey of 4,000 U.S. adults conducted in February 2026.

Recent inflation data adds to that pressure, with the annual rate rising from 2.4% in February to 3.3% in March, according to consumer price index data released Friday. The increase was driven largely by a surge in energy costs as gasoline prices spiked amid the Iran war. Gasoline prices rose 21.2% in March, accounting for nearly three-quarters of the overall increase, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Even as a triumphant moon flyby primes agency for a 2028 landing, Trump’s proposed budget cuts cast pall on US space program

Even as Integrity, the mission moniker for the Orion capsule of Artemis II, ascended into the heavens days ago, Donald Trump was announcing his intention to slash NASA’s budget by 23%, including a 46% cut for space science initiatives.

And the Artemis program that has run years behind schedule and billions of dollars over budget offers no guarantees that the next, far harder stages will run as smoothly.

Leo’s comments did not directly mention war in Iran but read as his strongest condemnation of the conflict yet

Pope Leo XIV stepped into the international political arena at evening prayers in St Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City on Saturday, saying prayer for peace is “a bulwark against that delusion of omnipotence that surrounds us and is becoming increasingly unpredictable and aggressive.”

The first US-born pope said: “Even the holy Name of God, the God of life, is being dragged into discourses of death.”

Addressing world leaders who decide to go to war, Leo said: “To them we cry out: stop! It is time for peace! Sit at the table of dialogue and mediation – not at the table where rearmament is planned and deadly actions are decided.”

The United States and Iran failed to reach an agreement after a day of highly anticipated face-to-face peace talks, Washington's lead negotiator Vice President J.D. Vance announced on Sunday.

Amanda Ungaro is a Brazilian model deported by ICE who has threatened to expose Trump and Melania’s connections to Epstein. She is allegedly the reason behind Melania’s statement the other day.

After Cayden McBride finishes class in Rome, Georgia, the 19-year-old goes home, opens his laptop, and starts searching. For the past few months, he has been spending hours at a time combing through the Jeffrey Epstein files on the US Department of Justice (DOJ) website, and following others online who are doing the same.

Flight logs. Transcripts. Images. Videos. The material released by the DOJ has given new insight into the crimes of Epstein, the late convicted sex offender, and into his high-profile connections.

McBride believes the Epstein files still matter, even if the headlines have moved on to the Iran war recently.

"As a Christian, I don't believe anybody should endure what these women have been through," he says. "There is so much bad stuff in these files."

McBride was a self-described "Trump guy" and "very anti-establishment". He said he would always defend the president in the belief that Trump's "Make America Great Again" (Maga) movement stood for exposing corruption. But the DOJ's delay in releasing all the files, and the perceived lack of accountability afterwards, has left him and many others disheartened with the movement, the president and especially with Pam Bondi, Trump's former attorney general.

The seven-metre (23-foot) figure, packed with 14 kilograms (31 lb) of gunpowder, was part of a decades-old ceremony held on 5 April in El Burgo, a small town near the southern city of Malaga.

yal Adom, head of security for an Israeli community on the border with Lebanon, has a clear vision for the land just a few hundred meters away.

“I want to occupy,” he told The Intercept. “Yes, occupy, the word nobody likes. I want to occupy southern Lebanon. Move all the Arabs from there, up to the Litani River.”

We’re sitting in the command and control center in Moshav Netu’a, a village so close to the U.N.-brokered “Blue Line” separating Israel and Lebanon that one can see the physical barrier from the windows of many homes. Here, amid a temporary pause in fighting between the U.S.–Israeli alliance and Iran, there’s no sense of peace.

“The Arabs’ only motivation to stop fighting is if you take their land,” Adom said. “You kill them, it doesn’t matter. You hurt them, it doesn’t matter. Nothing matters. Only taking territories. This is the only thing that matters to them.”

Just like the SS using the Totenkopf

A man deported to Mexico has claimed that officers not only refused to see his documents but accused him of fraud

A U.S. citizen has been deported to Mexico despite telling arresting officers that he had proof of citizenship at home, according to a new report.

According to Univision’s Lidia Terrazas, 25-year-old Denver-born Brian Morales was threatened with either deportation or prison time following a traffic stop in Texas by Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) agents.

This is the latest in a string of incidents involving U.S. citizens and Department of Homeland Security agents during the first 18 months of Trump’s second term in office. In addition several American children have been deported alongside their parents, including a child undergoing cancer treatment in the U.S.

I wonder, what's more expensive: a decent wage for warehouse workers or the aftermath of a $600m arson?

The messaging from China’s Communist government may once have been dogmatic and rigid — not anymore. Having largely tamed the internet at home with tight censorship, Beijing is now tapping the power of social media and artificial intelligence to tell its story — and often to skewer the U.S. and its president.

In a five-minute AI-generated animation modeled after classic martial arts movies, China’s state media frames out an allegory for the war in Iran. A white eagle in regal attire representing the U.S. unleashes an evil laugh before his army attacks a group of Persian cats draped in black cloaks standing in for Iranians, who vow to fight after losing their leader and close off a crucial trading route.

Touching on injustice, revenge and worldly wisdom, the metaphor-rich short is the latest example of several AI-generated animations created by China’s state media in recent months to mock the U.S. as a global bully, including Donald Trump’s threat to take over Greenland and his plan to exert U.S. predominance in the Western Hemisphere.

The deft use of AI animation comes after Xi Jinping has pushed for years to boost the country’s abilities to spread its messages globally, gain a greater say on world affairs and counter Western narratives that Beijing often sees as biased or even derogatory about China. Pro-Iran groups similarly have used sleek, AI-generated memes to taunt the U.S. and Trump.

A war-driven jump in gas prices helped push US inflation to 3.3% in March, marking the fastest annual pace in nearly two years, new Bureau of Labor Statistics data showed Friday.

On a monthly basis, prices rose 0.9%, triple the 0.3% pace seen in February, when inflation was 2.4%, the latest Consumer Price Index data showed.

Gasoline prices, which rose a record 21.2% during the month, accounted for nearly three-quarters of the overall monthly increase.

Economists had expected prices to jump 0.9% from the month before and for the annual rate to climb to 3.4%, according to FactSet.

US intelligence indicates that China is preparing to deliver new air defense systems to Iran within the next few weeks, according to three people familiar with recent intelligence assessments.

It would be a provocative move considering Beijing said it helped broker the fragile ceasefire agreement that paused the war between Iran and the US earlier this week. President Donald Trump is also set to visit China early next month for talks with Chinese President Xi Jinping.

The intelligence also underscores how Iran may be using the ceasefire as an opportunity to replenish certain weapons systems with the help of key foreign partners.

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