Not too long ago, the Department of Justice could generally be trusted to prosecute cases in which lawyers believed that real wrongdoing had occurred. Now DOJ frequently unveils lawsuits that seem designed mostly for securing likes and reposts on right-wing social media—the actual facts be damned. Any high-profile criminal case brought by the Trump administration arrives with an air of suspicion.
Today, Jeanine Pirro, the top federal prosecutor for Washington, D.C.

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American politics is saturated with cash, and each election cycle seems to set new spending records—and yet, with the midterms in the home stretch, neither party thinks it has enough money. The irony is nearly as rich as the biggest donors.

This week could go down as the worst in the history of cybersecurity. On Wednesday, news emerged about two major vulnerabilities in PHP, a programming language used by 70 percent of websites, which prompted governments, hospitals, and companies around the world to take digital services offline as a precaution. There have already been millions of attempts to exploit these weaknesses.
But the PHP vulnerabilities were just the most attention-grabbing in a series of alarming revelations.

Last week, Senator Edward Markey published a social-media post seeking interns for his Boston office. He wrote that “BIPOC, LGBTQ+, working class, veterans, and other underrepresented candidates with Massachusetts ties are encouraged to apply.” Outrage quickly followed: Critics treated the post not as a straightforward attempt to encourage diversity in job applications, but rather as a discriminatory signal that white men would be disadvantaged in hiring.

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It can feel like an existential moment right now—one where many tech leaders are both warning against and accelerating the destructive forces of AI. But Naomi Klein and Astra Taylor argue that this could also be a turning point toward building something better. The authors of End Times Fascism talk with Galaxy Brain host Charlie Warzel about runaway wealth, the politics of AI, and how to prepare if the tech-bloated market crashes.