On a sunny Tuesday morning 25 years ago, Congress reconvened. Speaker Dennis Hastert called the House of Representatives to order, and the Illinois Republican recognized Rep. Earl Blumenauer. The bowtie-wearing Democrat from Oregon began delivering a speech criticizing the marketing of tobacco. He was the first of three members queued to give speeches. Only a […]
Attorney General Todd Blanche is stepping outside the traditional norms of the Justice Department to become a top political attack dog for Republicans in the homestretch before the midterm elections. Blanche, formerly President Donald Trump’s personal attorney, replaced Pam Bondi as acting attorney general in April of this past year after serving as her deputy […]
It’s “Australia Summer” on the streaming services — or perhaps I should say “Australia Antipodal Winter,” for those of us who still believe, in this divisive age, in a round Earth. Panned several weeks ago in this space, Netflix’s My Brilliant Career turned a daring Aussie novel into a calculated feminist trudge, the better to […]
If American sports media were to have a Mount Rushmore — if we were to select four figures whose voices and presences became inseparable from the games they covered — I don’t think there’d be much doubt that for the NFL, we’d choose John Madden; for the MLB, it would be Vin Scully; and for the NBA, […]
In President Donald Trump’s get-out-the-vote message to North Carolinians this week, he hammered Democratic Senate nominee Roy Cooper over his crime record during his two-term tenure as governor. It’s become a recurring theme for Republicans in the North Carolina Senate race, who are hoping to hold on to the battleground seat against one of the […]
The Federal Communications Commission gave its approval to Paramount Skydance’s requested 49.5% foreign ownership stake in its pending merger with Warner Bros. Discovery on Thursday. The move lets foreign investors, including sovereign wealth funds from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates, collectively own nearly 50% of the combined entity if the merger closes. […]
The chief of the U.S. Postal Service confirmed the agency has stopped its work on implementing a computer system that would have verified mail-in ballots for the midterm elections under an executive order from President Donald Trump. In a Thursday interview with the Associated Press, Postmaster General David Steiner said “we’re not doing anything” because […]
Top executives at OpenAI and Microsoft admitted they knew artificial intelligence poses an “existential threat” to news publications as the New York Times sues the technology companies over copyright infringement. Brent Hecht, Microsoft’s director of applied science, warned about the damaging effects that AI models will have on the internet and the company’s own business. […]
Rep. Thomas Massie (R-KY) announced Thursday that four Republicans, including him, have signed the Epstein Files II discharge petition and expressed confidence it will pass the House. The news comes after House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) sent lawmakers home for a seven-week recess ahead of the midterm elections. Massie and Rep. Ro Khanna (D-CA) are […]
A federal audit has found that UnitedHealthcare, the country’s largest health insurance company by revenue, likely inflated its Medicare billing claims by at least $46.9 million between 2020 and 2021. The Medicare compliance review, conducted by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’s inspector general’s office, concluded that UnitedHealthcare upcoded various diagnoses during the […]
