Why is Congress so old?

Last Friday, President Donald Trump Truthed a Social in which he announced that he was banning CNN, Politico and MS NOW from the White House. It’s an escalation in a broader pattern of Trump restricting press access when he thinks outlets paint him in a bad light.

After the ban, the television networks suspended their pooled coverage of Trump to protest the ban. Taking a step back here: While the White House press pool sounds like a renovation project that would break ground without congressional approval, it’s a group of journalists from various outlets that follow and record the president.

The banned outlets then filed a First Amendment lawsuit against the Trump administration, arguing the ban violates the First Amendment. In a court filing, the administration argued the ban should be allowed due to national security concerns. Trump’s Truth Social post announcing the ban never mentioned national security.

The judge in that lawsuit ordered the Trump administration to restore access to the banned outlets. The White House then reportedly disobeyed that court order by continuing to block journalists from the outlets, before ultimately letting them back in. Good news for press freedom, but tough for anyone who was gonna use this as an excuse to play hooky.

In a speech to the United Nations Tuesday, Trump threatened to “annihilate the Islamic Republic.” In the international diplomacy equivalent of a supervillain monologue, Trump wondered out loud, “Do I drive them into hell with no chance of survival and no hope of future greatness or generations?” This is not the first time Trump has threatened to annihilate Iran. In fairness, he also voiced his support for something that could annihilate all of us: artificial superintelligence. (More on that in last week’s episode of “What’s Your Source?”)

Trump also repeated his lie that he has ended eight wars. He’s been involved in mediations for many conflicts, but he has overstated his role. He played a role in the ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, but Israeli attacks have continued to kill Palestinians in an ongoing genocide that has persisted after the deal was struck. In other cases, he fully failed to broker a deal but still took credit.

He also threatened to topple the Cuban government. The president said his administration is “seeking a fundamental change in the situation in Cuba,” and added, “it will fall.” He’s previously vowed a takeover of Cuba, calling it a failed state. He cited their lack of oil, after his administration essentially blocked off their access to oil. Imagine me calling you a nerd for reading this newsletter after I wrote and sent you this newsletter. And in the past, U.S. involvement has not worked out great for Cubans, or for the rest of Latin America.

The Trump administration is deporting many migrants to third countries, or countries that are not the U.S. or their countries of origin. They’re mostly in Latin America and Africa. Migrants told The Washington Post that once they’re in these third countries, they’re often beaten, starved and barred from communicating with their lawyers or families.

Then those countries often send migrants back to their countries of origin, which, again, can be dangerous. Last Friday, when Trump had his hands full with (allegedly!) violating the First Amendment, a federal appeals court ruled that this whole process isn't allowed. But the administration wants to keep doing it so bad that they’re gonna ask their friends on the Supreme Court to weigh in. Previously, the justices have allowed this practice.

And the administration isn’t just pouring in time and effort to put immigrants’ lives at risk. They’re also spending tons of money on it. The Post reports that they’ve authorized or pledged at least $410 million for agreements with 31 countries to deport migrants to. SPLC-designated white nationalist Stephen Miller is the person ordering these agreements. He’s also largely the architect of Trump’s anti-immigrant policies.

You know all that money we’re spending on kicking immigrants out? We used to spend it on bringing them in. The Bureau of Population, Refugees and Migration used to focus on that, until former administration official and Nazi saluter Elon Musk led the charge to cut hundreds of those positions. The Trump administration also set up an Office of Remigration within that bureau. “Remigration” refers to the racist idea of expelling racial minorities and immigrants. Mind you, this is all happening under the umbrella of the State Department, which is headed by a cabinet official whose family previously benefited from some of the most generous immigration policy in U.S. history and whose diaspora the administration is also targeting in this anti-immigrant campaign.

When we first asked you all to call in with questions we could answer on “What’s Your Source?”, a former Anthropic insider had just said AI could kill us all, possibly by 2030. Naturally, it was on lots of your minds, and mine too. So, I helped write an episode about it and edited a video for it!

First off, looking at AI development with skepticism and an eye for accountability feels healthy to me. AI development is largely unregulated despite calls from states, lawmakers and developers themselves to rein it in. There have also been very public, recent instances of AI going rogue. Fears of a worst-case scenario include AI developing and releasing a bioweapon — something Anthropic recently said it stopped research towards. Other fears include AI powering killer robots, launching nukes, or turning us into paper clips.

But here’s where I take solace: Lots of those fears are, at the moment, only hypothetical. Even the bioweapon thing that Anthropic stopped wasn’t definitely an attempt to kill us. It could have been related to vaccine research. Maybe it’s not super reassuring that vaccine researchers using Claude could accidentally use it to wipe us out, but it’s reassuring to me that Claude isn’t killing us yet. And that Anthropic researcher’s estimate of a greater than 10% chance AI wipes out humanity within a decade? Even though it raised alarms, he didn’t back it up with any real data. I can say there’s only a 10% chance of me flaking on my plans tonight, then still go to bed at 9pm! Both stats draw from the same sources: lived experience and vibes.

Will Oremus, our former Washington Post colleague and current tech reporter for The Atlantic, said in an interview with Dave that as industry leaders like Anthropic’s CEO call for more regulation, some people wonder if they have ulterior motives. Regulating the industry now could keep Anthropic and a few other companies on top by hobbling smaller competitors. This is a concept called “regulatory capture.” But Will summed up a question I have: Does it matter if tech CEOs really care about not killing us all, as long as we get regulations that keep AI from killing us all?

Social Security’s trust fund is expected to run out of surplus money in 2034, according to AARP, which paid Local News International to do a video on this. But that doesn’t mean the program will just stop existing. One financial analyst told a reporter in Indianapolis that payroll taxes cover 75 to 80 percent of what Social Security pays out. The rest of what it pays out comes from that surplus fund that’s expected to run out in 2034.

It’s Congress’ job to decide whether Social Security gets funded or not. One recent proposed solution from Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Sen. Bernie Moreno (R-Ohio) would raise the cap on the income level subject to payroll taxes. And if I were to write that in a way that makes sense, I would say: There’s a maximum amount of money that can be taxed to pay into Social Security. Warren and Moreno want to raise that maximum. The goal is that really rich people would then help the rest of us afford to retire.

That brings us to this week’s media literacy tip from our friends at MediaWise! You might see the word “insolvent” thrown around in coverage of this issue. Here’s how to navigate unfamiliar language in news and politics.

The quality of the video.

The timeliness of the video.

The value of the video.