politics

The governor called the budget balanced. A California founder on the same podcast said expenses exceed revenue and the gap is penciled away with borrowing — on top of a tax base that may be walking out the door.

The first Trump administration could not stop a subsidized Huawei telecom stack from spreading abroad. The second admin's answer, in OSTP's telling: sell the world a turnkey American AI package — chips, models, apps — backed by export finance.

Historical backlash, an unpopular incumbent, and 2025 special-election overperformance all point the House one way — in Nate Silver's telling on All-In. Gasoline, contingent on how long the Iran war runs, is the lever he still grants Republicans.

Medicaid, USDA child nutrition, pandemic UI — federally funded, state-administered, weakly verified. Minnesota’s prosecuted cases are real. Whether MN and CA are statistical outliers is not settled.

A brief June 2025 strike on nuclear sites. A much larger February campaign that killed the supreme leader — and a June memorandum that collapsed in July, with shipping still under fire.

The July CUSMA review has happened. The deal stays alive to 2036, on annual reviews. In August a fifty-percent duty punched through the exemption — and the decade-long Canadian gap still predates the tariffs.