Puck, the subscription newsletter and events business, is in late-stage talks with private investment firm RedBird Capital Partners about a deal that would see RedBird becoming its largest shareholder, sources confirmed to Axios.
Why it matters: The deal, which values Puck at roughly $250 million, would set a strong industry benchmark for other media startups looking to liquidate.
By the numbers: Puck raised more than $17 million since it launched in 2021.
It acquired Air Mail, another subscription email startup with overlapping investors, in a cash-and-stock deal worth $16 million last year. Air Mail had raised more than $30 million across two funding rounds.
Neither Puck nor Air Mail were profitable at the time of the transaction, Axios reported.

#puck #axios

A one-year contract extension for Arizona State women's basketball coach Molly Miller is in the works.
Axios first reported on the item, which will go before the Board of Regents later this month.
The deal would extend her contract through the 2030-31 season and would increase her base salary to $850,000 on May 1, 2027. She would also receive subsequent raises up to $1 million on May 1, 2030.
Miller led ASU to a 24-11 record and an NCAA tournament appearance in her first season.
The Sun Devils hadn't won more than 20 games since the 2019-20 season, when the pandemic canceled ASU's likely NCAA Tournament bid.

#ncaa #tournament #contract #state

This story was originally published on Payments Dive. To receive daily news and insights, subscribe to our free daily Payments Dive newsletter.
Stripe's top executives observe a "growing advantage" of remaining a privately held company, they said in a letter to investors last week.
This year marked the start of what Stripe executives called "a large inflection in long-run trends," fueled by artificial intelligence, wrote John and Patrick Collison, the Irish brothers who co-founded Stripe in 2010 and still lead it.
Being a private company offers "a growing advantage as we venture into the vicissitudes" of this era, they wrote on Wednesday. The letter was also signed by Will Gaybrick, Stripe's president of technology and business. Patrick Collison is the company's chief executive and John Collison is its president.
A Stripe spokesperson on Thursday confirmed the authenticity of the letter, which was first reported by Axios, the newsletter publisher.

#collison #letter #patrick #daily

By Alexander Cornwell and Tuvan Gumrukcu
JERUSALEM/ANKARA, Aug 20 (Reuters) - Israel accused Turkey of "dangerous adventures in Syria" on Thursday, while Ankara called for a halt to "reckless" Israeli attacks, two days after Israel bombed a Syrian airbase where it said Turkish troops were about to deploy.
The attack has brought into focus tensions between regional ‌powers Turkey and Israel over Syria, an Arab state which borders both countries and where Ankara's influence as an ally of President Ahmed al-Sharaa has stirred Israeli alarm ‌since he toppled Bashar al-Assad in 2024.
Israel said that Damascus was on the verge of allowing Turkish troops to deploy at the Abu al-Duhur airbase and had ignored Israeli warnings that such a deployment would pose a threat to Israel's security - a claim denied by Turkey.
Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani, in comments to Axios on Wednesday, said he had made clear to Israel there were no plans to establish a Turkish military base at Abu al-Duhur.

#ankara #syria #airbase #troops

US stock futures trod water as the standoff between the US and Iran became more entrenched, raising doubts about progress on a deal to reopen the Strait of Hormuz.
Futures on the Dow Jones Industrial Average (YM=F), the S&P 500 (ES=F), and the Nasdaq-100 (NQ=F) were roughly flat in premarket trading after stocks closed lower on Monday.
Ongoing geopolitical tensions and increasing demands around war compensation put downward pressure on equities. On Sunday, President Trump rebuked Iran's demand for reparations and said he would wait for economic pressure to build on the country. "We are only semi-negotiating with them," Trump told Axios.
Iranian foreign minister Abbas Araghchi, meanwhile, stated that there was "no possibility of restarting negotiations" until the US compensates Iran for violations of the June memorandum of understanding.
Oil prices continued to climb as a result, building anticipation toward Wednesday's Consumer Price Index (CPI) report. After Friday's softer-than-expected jobs report, bets have shifted toward a Federal Reserve rate hike in September, with Cleveland Federal Reserve president Beth Hammack telling Yahoo Finance on Monday that it may take more than one rate hike to rein in inflation.

#Iran #federal #toward

The AI industry's talent war has pushed salaries to extraordinary heights, with companies offering compensation packages that would have been unthinkable just a few years ago. According to Axios, the trend is worrying Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei, who reportedly expressed concern about new talent coming to the company for the money rather than the mission.
The comments may be seen as ironic coming from Amodei, considering Anthropic offers some eye-watering salaries for jobs that typically pay much less. Take a job posting for a brand marketing events lead at the company, which lists an annual salary ranging from $320,000 to $400,000.
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#anthropic #company

The most-repeated objection to the AI buildout is that ******* ody can show the money coming back. It's something billionaire Mark Cuban explicitly said on the Bihe Big Tech Podcast, that "they'll never get it," with 'it' referring to the trillions of dollars spent on the AI buildout. He further classified it as "they're just sh*tting away that money." The billionaire has exclaimed repeatedly about the trillions being spent on the AI buildout.
Possibly the largest benefactor in the world of this trend, however, has a completely polar take on the subject. Nvidia (NVDA) CEO Jensen Huang was asked a version of this by Axios' Mike Allen: "When does the party stop? When does your finance team start to worry?" Instead of answering with a forecast, he answered with an invoice.
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#trillions

Nvidia Corporation (NASDAQ:NVDA), Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ:META), OpenAI and Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) now appear on the same policy letter supporting open-weight AI. Anthropic does not. The letter published on July 24 asks U.S. policymakers to avoid broad restrictions on models whose weights can be downloaded, modified and run privately. OpenAI and Alphabet Inc (NASDAQ:GOOGL) joined after the initial publication, Axios reported on July 27.
Nvidia sells the hardware and software used to train and run AI models. A larger field of model developers, more local deployments, and cheaper inference can all expand demand for its products. Nvidia can benefit even if the models themselves become difficult to monetize.
Source: unsplash
Meta Platforms, Inc. (NASDAQ:META) has another reason to favor open weights. Its models can enter products and corporate systems that might otherwise rely on OpenAI or Anthropic. Outside developers improve the tools, hosting services and integrations around them. Meta can benefit through its applications, advertising business and infrastructure without charging for every model call.
Closed frontier labs can still justify their prices through better performance, enterprise support, reliability and safety. But every task an open model can perform well enough becomes harder to sell through an expensive proprietary API. Customers can also host a model themselves instead of sending data to one provider indefinitely. OpenAI and Anthropic could consequently lose some pricing power and customer lock-in.

#openai #NVIDIA #anthropic #open

Benzinga and Yahoo Finance LLC may earn commission or revenue on some items through the links below.
Nvidia Corp. CEO Jensen Huang said the U.S. should embrace, not ban, China's AI models, arguing that high-quality open-source technology should be used rather than feared.
In an interview with Axios on Tuesday, Huang called the Chinese models "excellent" and dismissed concerns that OpenAI and Anthropic should fear open AI models, saying they broaden AI adoption by attracting new users, while many customers will still pay for the superior performance and reliability of closed models.
Huang pushed back on fears that downloaded Chinese AI models create a "backdoor" to Beijing, arguing they can be securely customized and isolated.
Don't Miss:

#chinese #arguing #finance #NVIDIA

A decade ago, Seattle was the poster child of American tech prosperity. Amazon and Microsoft had turned a midsize Pacific Northwest city into a magnet for engineers, executives, and capital, adding roughly 40,000 jobs per year at the peak of the boom, according to the Puget Sound Regional Council.
Today, more than one-third of downtown Seattle's office **** e sits empty, its job postings have collapsed faster than almost any other U.S. metro, and even Starbucks—the coffee giant founded in the city in 1971—is shifting jobs south to Nashville, as it commits to a $100 million, 2,000-person new footprint in Music City. The story of Seattle's reversal unfolds in three overlapping arcs: an office market in free fall, a labor market that has gone from boom to bust, and a policy environment that has made survival harder for the small businesses left behind.
Seattle's downtown office vacancy rate hit 35.6% in the fourth quarter of 2025, up from 32.3% a year earlier, according to Cushman & Wakefield data. That marks a stunning reversal from the pre-pandemic era: As recently as early 2025, the central business district's availability rate—offices with departures pending—and vacancy rate were already hitting all-time highs based on CoStar data stretching back to 1982.
Some brokers put the number even higher, with Colliers reporting vacancy touching 39.1% in late 2024 as remote work, tech layoffs, and cautious leasing decisions compounded. Office building values in the district have plunged sharply as a result, with landlords struggling to fill **** e abandoned by major tenants.
The office crisis is inseparable from a broader collapse in hiring. Seattle metro job postings fell 35% between February 2020 and October 2025, the second-steepest drop of any major U.S. metro after San Francisco's 37% decline, according to Axios's **** ysis of Indeed data.

#city

Nvidia CEO Jensen Huang said American companies should be free to use Chinese open-source artificial intelligence models, positioning himself against Trump administration officials and U.S. AI labs that have sought to restrict them.
"These Chinese models are excellent," Huang told Axios on Tuesday. "Open-source models that are excellent should be used." He said companies should "absolutely" be allowed to use them.
The remarks came as the release of Kimi K3, a model from Beijing-based Moonshot AI that combines near-frontier performance, lower prices, and open weights, has rattled chip and AI stocks, reviving concerns that cheaper models could undercut the case for large AI infrastructure spending. Huang argued Wall Street has the situation backward. "Free AI should be great for hardware," he said. "Free AI should be great for chips. Free AI should be great for data centers." Cheaper and more accessible models draw more people into AI ecosystems, he argued, and that broader adoption ultimately drives up demand for the chips and data centers that Nvidia provides.
Huang also rejected the argument that downloaded Chinese models create a security backdoor to Beijing. Companies can customize those models and run them inside secure environments, he said, and openness makes AI more secure because outside researchers can inspect models and identify weaknesses. "If everything just becomes one single model, one single point of attack, one single source of failure, I think the world is much, much more vulnerable," he said.
His comments came hours after Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent told Fox Business that the administration is examining Chinese AI models for evidence of stolen U.S. intellectual property and considering sanctions. "If we see ... that overseas models are stealing from our great companies, we have the ability to sanction them because of this theft," Bessent said, according to Axios. Huang said companies should still face consequences for violating privacy or contracts, but he argued the response should target misconduct, not the models themselves. "Distillation, learning from AI, learning from other sources of knowledge, is fundamental to intelligence," he said.

#Companies

Jensen Huang is urging Washington to stop worrying about China's open-source AI just as an all-out panic has broken out over the highly capable, low-cost models that can increasingly compete with the most advanced products by OpenAI and Anthropic.
The Nvidia CEO said in an interview with Axios Tuesday the U.S. should not ban these kinds of models, which are being developed by Chinese companies like DeepSeek, Alibaba, and Moonshot AI—which last week raised alarms when it released its highly capable model, Kimi K3.
While U.S. companies, including AI coding startup Cursor, are increasingly turning to open-source alternatives from China to save on the high costs ***** ociated with American AI models, the White House has reportedly considered restricting their use partly based on fears that the models could be used for surveillance purposes by China or that they could threaten the viability of homegrown AI companies.
The White House reportedly considered using executive power to impose conditions on U.S. companies looking to use Chinese AI models, including forcing these companies to guarantee security and accept liability if breached, Axios reported.
The White House did not immediately respond to Fortune's request for comment.

#Companies #white #China

The bottom 50% of households in the U.S. own only $4.27 trillion of the nation's $174 trillion in available wealth. By contrast, the top 0.1% own $25.07 trillion, and the top 99 to 99.9% own a little under $30 trillion, according to Federal Reserve data.

With AI now supercharging the stock market, and richer families already owning the majority of those ***** ets, that divide is only likely to widen.

Jamie Dimon, CEO of JPMorgan Chase, is well aware of this phenomenon. In fact, the man worth more than $3 billion according to Forbes says he understands why people are "anti-rich." Speaking to Axios, Dimon said the "anti-rich thing has been around for a long time."
In his role as CEO of the largest bank in the U.S., Dimon rubs shoulders with some of the wealthiest people on the planet. But he also works for the bank's customers who have more standard levels of income.
The resurgence in popular resentment of inequality has happened because "we have, in fact, left the lower-income folks behind," Dimon said. The Wall Street veteran, who has the ear of everyone from world leaders to central bankers to the markets, said he often reminds well-off people that they don't have to worry about the schools their children attend, and they don't live in "crime-ridden neighborhoods."
"If you are making less income and you're in a poor rural area, or an inner city area, your schools aren't good, you go to crime-ridden neighborhoods, [there is] more divorce, less jobs–it is becoming intergenerational, so let's acknowledge it and fix it," Dimon said.
Dimon contextualized the frustration of lower-income families, noting that, compared with the 1960s and 1970s, standards of living have improved across the board. In fact, a Fed study released last year found that the share of people who said they were financially "doing okay" or "living comfortably" rose from 62% to 73% in the U.S.

Workers daydream of the moment they can clock out of work for good, kick their feet up, and bask in their indefinite downtime. However, JPMorgan Chase CEO Jamie Dimon has just revealed that his retirement will be the second act of his career.
"l'll do business with people I like," Dimon told Axios of his plans for after he steps down as CEO in a recent interview.
"I'm gonna probably write a book, maybe more about management and stuff like that, and I might do one on the financial crisis. There's a lot of stuff that really people don't fully understand about what happened."
The 70-year-old banking giant legend said that teaching is also on the table—a popular gig for leaders with decades of industry expertise. Former General Electric (GE) chief executive Jeff Immelt, who led the $370 billion industrial giant for 16 years, went on to become a lecturer at Stanford's Graduate School of Business. Plus, Dimon threw in the possibility of "something around a media-related thing." No matter what post-CEO career he follows, he'll be kept busy.
"I have got to do something," Dimon said on the Acquired podcast last year. "I'm not going to twiddle my thumbs and smell the flowers."

Oil prices moved modestly higher on Tuesday after renewed security incidents in the Strait of Hormuz revived concerns over potential disruptions to global energy shipments, offsetting expectations of stronger supply from OPEC+ producers.
By 04:41 ET (08:41 GMT), Brent crude futures had risen 1.1% to US$72.77 a barrel, while US West Texas Intermediate crude futures gained 1.1% to US$69.30 a barrel.
According to Axios, citing two US officials, Iran's military launched at least two missiles at commercial vessels transiting the Strait of Hormuz on Monday night, ending a week-long pause in attacks under an informal understanding between Washington and Tehran.
The report added that the United States is expected to respond with strikes against Iranian targets.
Earlier on Tuesday, the UK Maritime Trade Operations agency confirmed it had received a report that a tanker travelling near the coast of Oman had been struck by an unidentified projectile, causing a fire onboard. Although Iran has not officially claimed responsibility, anonymous sources cited by Iranian state television suggested the target was a tanker carrying liquefied natural gas from Qatar.

By Enas Alashray and Mrinmay Dey
July 6 (Reuters) - Iran's Revolutionary Guards fired at least two missiles at commercial ships transiting through the Strait of Hormuz on Monday night, Axios reported, citing two U.S. officials.
Two commercial ‌ships suffered significant damage but had no casualties, the report said, citing a U.S. official.
Separately, Britain's maritime security ‌agency said a tanker caught fire after being hit by an unknown projectile east of Oman's Limah early on Tuesday.
The United Kingdom Maritime Trade Operations agency (UKMTO) said early on Tuesday that the tanker was struck on its port side while travelling southbound about 8 nautical miles (15 km) east of Limah, causing a fire. No casualties or environmental impact had been reported.

Reddit, Inc. (NYSE:RDDT) is one of the stocks with rising earnings estimates and fresh catalysts.
Reddit, Inc. (NYSE:RDDT) is one of the stocks with rising earnings estimates and fresh catalysts. The stock has 6 upward EPS revisions and 1 downward revision for the upcoming fiscal year over the last three months, while revenue estimates show 27 upward revisions and 2 downward revisions. The revision mix is stronger on revenue than earnings, which fits a company still building out its monetization model.
On June 22, Axios reported that Reddit expanded its "community intelligence" advertising strategy at Cannes Lions with new tools tied to shopping research and product discovery. Reddit also said nearly half of shoppers verify AI-generated recommendations on the platform before buying, and that 1 in 4 Redditors buy a product after seeing their decision validated there. The catalyst is Reddit's attempt to turn user discussions into a more valuable ad signal as AI changes search and shopping behavior. That makes the estimate story less about raw user growth and more about improving ad products, higher commercial intent, and better monetization of existing communities.
Reddit, Inc. (NYSE:RDDT) operates an online community platform where users create, discuss, rank, and search content across interest-based forums.
While we acknowledge the risk and potential of RDDT as an investment, our conviction lies in the belief that some AI stocks hold greater promise for delivering higher returns and doing so within a shorter time frame. If you are looking for an AI stock that is more promising than RDDT and that has 10,000% upside potential, check out our report about this cheapest AI stock.

Former Vice President Kamala Harris is courting New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, and other progressive power players as 2028 speculation builds around another possible White House bid.
The phone call with Mamdani last week, first reported by Axios and confirmed by Fox News Digital, along with other closed-door meetings with progressive groups, suggests Harris is trying to shore up support from factions of the party that didn't support her during her 2024 run.
Additionally, Harris met with progressive Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, D-N.Y., behind the scenes at a Black women empowerment summit in Chicago, Axios first reported, and Fox News Digital confirmed.
Harris reportedly has also been reaching out to pro-Palestinian groups after she faced pushback from those groups during her 2024 presidential run. Harris reached out to at least one group that was part of the "Uncommitted Movement" that developed as a result of President Joe Biden's handling of the Israel and Gaza conflict.
Kamala Harris Drops Biggest Hint Yet On 2028 White House Run

June 27 (Reuters) - The Trump administration is close to allowing Anthropic to restore access to its ‌Fable 5 model, Axios reported on Saturday, citing ‌a source close to the situation.
Reuters could not immediately confirm the report. Anthropic and the White House did not immediately respond to requests for comment.
Anthropic had abruptly disabled its most advanced AI models — Mythos 5 and Fable 5 — for all ‌users after the ⁠government's June 12 export control order.
Insiders expect the administration's limits on Fable 5 could be ⁠lifted as soon as this coming week, the report said.
Conversations between the parties are expected to continue over the weekend, and Anthropic expects to restore Fable access soon, the ‌report added, citing a second source.

Databricks is launching new tools to help companies cap AI costs, after finding customers had accidentally spent tens of millions of dollars on their broader AI bills in a single month.
Why it matters: AI agents are making corporate software bills harder to predict, and Databricks wants to be the layer companies use to keep them under control.
The big picture: The rise of AI agents that autonomously interact with models without much human supervision is increasing AI usage and forcing companies to blow budgets.
Traditional cloud cost tools often flag overspending only after the damage is done.
Databricks hopes its new tool helps firms pivot from token maxing to "value maxing," Patrick Wendell, Databricks co-founder, tells Axios.

A regional ******* yst says fears that President Donald Trump could "flip" on Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu amid a critical push for a U.S.-Iran peace agreement are growing in Jerusalem, a concern highlighted Sunday after the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) struck Beirut for a second time.
Despite U.S. warnings that any strikes would derail a breakthrough with Tehran, the strikes came as Netanyahu prepared to convene Israel's Security Cabinet and after Trump announced a new U.S.-Iran memorandum of understanding (MOU) was expected to be signed imminently.
"The strikes today in Beirut are creating issues with finalizing the deal," a diplomat involved in the talks with Tehran told Fox News Chief Foreign Correspondent Trey Yingst, adding that they were "a clear attempt by Israel to sabotage the president's deal and drag the United States back into war."
Trump went on to condemn Israel's strikes in a post on Truth Social, also telling Axios that Netanyahu had "no f---ing judgment."
Why Trump Keeps Flipping On Iran: A President Who Sees The World As He Wants It To Be

Oil prices pared gains early Monday after jumping amid strikes between Iran and Israel, after the latter targeted Hezbollah in Lebanon. The S&P 500 gained steam as President Donald Trump's efforts to restrain both countries and keep ceasefire negotiations on track seem to be working.
Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps announced the end of military operations vs. Israel but warned of "harsher and more devastating strikes" if Lebanon attacks resume. That follows Trump's Truth Social post saying that things should move quickly to a final deal that lifts oil blockades, unless "ignorance or stupidity (get) in its way."
Crude oil prices rose 0.8% from Friday afternoon levels to $91.29 a barrel, but came way off morning highs of $95.47, according to CME Group data. Near-month oil futures traded above $100 as recently as May 19. Markets now show futures prices falling close to $80 a barrel for December delivery and near $75 by next June. That compares with prices below $70 before war broke out on Feb. 28.
Benchmark crude oil prices in Europe rose 1.4% to $94.40, after earlier trading near $98. Brent crude traded above $110 on May 19, according to Intercontinental Exchange data.
Trump had sought to dissuade Israel from retaliating after Iran launched missiles, saying that the "Iranian strikes didn't hurt anybody." Israel fired at an Iranian petrochemical complex, but the strikes were characterized by Axios as "relatively limited."

That is the frustrating math facing many U.S. buyers in 2026. Mortgage rates may ease. Some markets may show better affordability. Incomes may rise. But for the typical household trying to buy a home, the numbers still often do not work.
Axios reported that more than 75% of U.S. homes for sale were unaffordable to the typical household, citing a Bankrate **** ysis. The median U.S. household earns roughly $80,000 a year, while the **** ysis found that about $113,000 in annual income was needed to afford a $435,000 median-priced home under its **** umptions.
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By Alexander Cornwell, Parisa Hafezi and Bo Erickson
BEIRUT/DUBAI/NEW BRUNSWICK, New Jersey, June 7 (Reuters) - U.S. President Donald Trump said on Sunday he would tell Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu not to strike back after Iran fired a salvo of missiles at Israeli targets in retaliation for an attack on the outskirts of Beirut, news outlet Axios reported.
Iran has long said any peace deal with the U.S. would depend on ‌a ceasefire also holding in Lebanon, which Israel invaded in March in pursuit of Iran-backed Hezbollah fighters who fired rockets and drones across the border in solidarity with Tehran.
But Israel earlier on Sunday launched strikes in the ‌Beirut area for the first time since the U.S. announced a truce plan for Lebanon last week.
The Israeli military later said it had identified missiles launched from Iran and that its defense systems had intercepted them. Details on whether Israel suffered any damage were not yet available.

President Donald Trump reportedly is reconsidering the $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" described in his May 18 settlement agreement with the IRS, which was designed to compensate people who claim they were targeted by the Biden administration for "improper and unlawful political, personal, and/or ideological reasons." That brazenly corrupt scheme, which provoked vigorous objections from Republican legislators and ran into two judicial roadblocks last week, "has become a distraction," an unnamed administration official told Axios.
Although "the president believes government was weaponized against people," that official added, "this isn't the time and vehicle" for addressing those grievances. In other words, doling out taxpayer money to Trump's allies under the pretext of a lawsuit that pitted the president against agencies he oversees turned out to be unexpectedly controversial. It's a mystery why Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche ever thought that plan was a good idea.
Trump sued the IRS and the Treasury Department in January, preposterously alleging that an IRS contractor's illegal leaking of his tax returns had caused "at least" $10 billion in damages. In addition to offering an improbable estimate of the injury he had suffered, Trump missed the statutory deadline for filing such claims. And although he argued that the IRS had failed to properly oversee its contractors, it was not clear whether the agency could be held liable for the crimes of someone it did not employ. But the Justice Department, which was charged with representing the IRS in court, never bothered to mount a defense.
That failure underlined the blatant conflicts of interest created by the case, both sides of which were represented by lawyers who work for Trump. "I'm supposed to work out a settlement with myself," Trump acknowledged a few days after filing the lawsuit.
That bizarre situation prompted Kathleen Williams, the federal judge overseeing the case in the Southern District of Florida, to question whether it involved a genuine controversy between adverse parties, as required for the lawsuit to proceed. Williams ordered briefing on that issue by May 20. The Justice Department dodged that order by announcing the settlement, which Williams never had a chance to review, two days before the deadline.

President Donald Trump reportedly is reconsidering the $1.8 billion "Anti-Weaponization Fund" described in his May 18 settlement agreement with the IRS, which was designed to compensate people who claim they were targeted by the Biden administration for "improper and unlawful political, personal, and/or ideological reasons." That brazenly corrupt scheme, which provoked vigorous objections from Republican legislators and ran into two judicial roadblocks last week, "has become a distraction," an unnamed administration official told Axios.
Although "the president believes government was weaponized against people," that official added, "this isn't the time and vehicle" for addressing those grievances. In other words, doling out taxpayer money to Trump's allies under the pretext of a lawsuit that pitted the president against agencies he oversees turned out to be unexpectedly controversial. It's a mystery why Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche ever thought that plan was a good idea.
Trump sued the IRS and the Treasury Department in January, preposterously alleging that an IRS contractor's illegal leaking of his tax returns had caused "at least" $10 billion in damages. In addition to offering an improbable estimate of the injury he had suffered, Trump missed the statutory deadline for filing such claims. And although he argued that the IRS had failed to properly oversee its contractors, it was not clear whether the agency could be held liable for the crimes of someone it did not employ. But the Justice Department, which was charged with representing the IRS in court, never bothered to mount a defense.
That failure underlined the blatant conflicts of interest created by the case, both sides of which were represented by lawyers who work for Trump. "I'm supposed to work out a settlement with myself," Trump acknowledged a few days after filing the lawsuit.
That bizarre situation prompted Kathleen Williams, the federal judge overseeing the case in the Southern District of Florida, to question whether it involved a genuine controversy between adverse parties, as required for the lawsuit to proceed. Williams ordered briefing on that issue by May 20. The Justice Department dodged that order by announcing the settlement, which Williams never had a chance to review, two days before the deadline.

President Trump reportedly took Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to task during a Monday phone call over the latter’s military campaign in Lebanon.
Axios reported, citing two U.S. officials and a third source briefed on the call, that Trump called Netanyahu “crazy” and accused him of ingratitude.
At one point, Trump reportedly yelled at Netanyahu, “What the f— are you doing?”
The Hill has reached out to the White House for comment.
Earlier Monday, Netanyahu ordered the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) to strike Hezbollah targets in the Dahiyeh district of Beirut. Israel and Hezbollah have engaged in fighting since October 2023, despite a ceasefire that began in November 2024.

The more generous U.S. ceasefire terms are, the more suspicious Iran becomes they’re a ruse for another attack, expert says

Iran’s regime may be wondering if an emerging deal to extend its ceasefire with the U.S. is too good to be true.
While talks are ongoing with key details still to be worked out, the outlines of a deal include Iran reopening the Strait of Hormuz and letting ships pass without paying tolls, sources told Axios. In return, the U.S. would lift its naval blockade on Iranian ports and provide some sanctions relief, allowing let Tehran to sell oil openly.
But the most contentious issues must be settled during a 60-day window for talks. That includes Iran’s uranium as well as the U.S. permanently ending sanctions and releasing Iran’s frozen ****** ets abroad, estimated at $25 billion.
The U.S. would also maintain its military presence in the region and only withdraw once a final deal is reached, Axios said. But Trump would still give up significant leverage.
“One of the problems with this approach and deciding that you will just deal with the nuclear issue later is that waiving sanctions on Iranian oil exports now will decrease, not increase, Iran’s motivation for reaching a nuclear agreement,” Eric Brewer, former National Security Council director for counterproliferation, said on X. “Also, by tying those sanctions to the Strait, you’ve lost your ability to reimpose them without a huge risk that Iran retakes control of the waterway.”

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Transgender and nonbinary athletes face bans as the Trump administration limits access to women's sports. NCAA denies funds to schools allowing trans women on female teams. Sources: axios, curiouscats #TransRights #NCAAPolicy