Featured

Trump: Iran asked me to be Supreme Leader, but I said no thanks

Trump’s “Iran asked me to be Supreme Leader” joke at an NRCC fundraiser uses a real, deadly leadership crisis in Iran to normalize assassination-as-policy and blur what’s confirmed about the war and succession.

Mar 26, 2026

Featured

‘Men need to be perp-walked’ after Epstein files release, Massie tells BBC

A GOP lawmaker says the Epstein document releases are still falling short—because redactions and withheld material may be blocking accountability and survivor-centered justice.

Mar 25, 2026

Buried.News

The stories buried under the noise

Primary focus

Trump fires Kristi Noem as Homeland Security Secretary

A Cabinet secretary was forced out amid contracting and oversight scrutiny, signaling that executive control—not transparent accountability—can dictate leadership of the agency driving mass detention and deportation.

Mar 5, 2026

Featured

The Trump gold coin is not normal : Consider This from NPR

A federal design panel OK’d a Trump portrait for a commemorative gold coin, but the key question is whether Treasury can legally bypass long-standing limits meant to keep living politicians off U.S. money.

Mar 23, 2026

Featured

White House Confronted Over Huge Bets Made Minutes Before Trump’s Big War Move

A $580 million burst of oil-futures selling minutes before Trump’s Iran “talks” post raises a basic public-interest question: did anyone trade on advance knowledge of a market-moving national security decision?

Mar 24, 2026

Netflix, After Walking Away From Warner Bros. Deal, Will ‘Move Forward’ With ‘$2.8 Billion in Our Pocket That We Didn’t Have a Few Weeks Ago,’ CFO Says

Corporate dealmaking moved billions on a breakup fee and a hostile bid, but it did not test any U.S. democratic guardrails or federal institutional norms.

Economy

Mar 4, 2026

Sources

https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/netflix-warner-bros-deal-2-8-billion-in-our-pocket-cfo-says-1236679712

Summary

Netflix ended its planned acquisition of Warner Bros. Discovery’s studios and streaming business after Paramount Skydance increased its bid and Netflix received a $2.8 billion breakup fee. The outcome shifted control of the transaction to a hostile, debt-fueled takeover by Paramount Skydance, with Warner Bros. Discovery terminating Netflix’s agreement in favor of a “superior” offer. Netflix now retains capital it did not expect to have and says it will continue pursuing growth opportunities without changing its M&A strategy.

Detail

Netflix CFO Spence Neumann said at the Morgan Stanley Technology, Media & Telecom Conference that Netflix exited the Warner Bros. Discovery bidding process because the price increased beyond what the company considered financially acceptable. Netflix had agreed in December to buy Warner Bros.’s studios and streaming business, but on Feb. 26 it abandoned the deal after David Ellison’s Paramount Skydance raised its hostile bid for WBD in its entirety to $31 per share. Warner Bros. Discovery terminated its agreement with Netflix in favor of Paramount’s offer, which it described as “superior.”

Paramount Skydance paid Netflix a $2.8 billion breakup fee following the termination. Neumann said Netflix would “move forward” with the $2.8 billion and that the Warner Bros. process did not change Netflix’s M&A strategy. He said Netflix believed it would have been a strong steward of the assets and had confidence in a path to regulatory approval.

Goldman Sachs says AI

A marquee Wall Street assessment punctures AI’s domestic-growth narrative, exposing how a trillion-dollar investment wave may be boosting foreign GDP while leaving US output largely unchanged.

Economy

Sources

https://www.techspot.com/news/111440-goldman-sachs-ai-impact-us-economy-basically-zero.html

Summary

Goldman Sachs analysts said AI’s impact on the US economy was “basically zero” in 2025 and did not meaningfully contribute to the officially recorded 2.2 percent GDP growth. The assessment reframes the AI boom as a capital-allocation story whose gains may be accruing outside US economic accounts, particularly through Asia-centered hardware supply chains. The practical consequence is heightened risk of mispriced expectations and policy decisions being made around an economic “growth engine” that is not showing up in measured domestic output.

Reality Check

The threat here is economic capture by narrative: when markets and policymakers treat hype as growth, we risk steering public strategy and private capital around benefits that are not appearing in measured US output. Nothing described is likely criminal; it reflects lawful analyst opinion and corporate capital spending, not fraud, coercion, or bribery under federal statutes like 18 U.S.C. § 1343 or § 1348. The democratic vulnerability is governance by storyline—our industrial policy and regulatory choices can be distorted when politically convenient claims about “AI-driven growth” substitute for measurable domestic results.

Detail

Goldman Sachs analysts, including Joseph Briggs, assessed that artificial intelligence had a “basically zero” impact on the US economy in 2025. They argued that large language models, chatbots, and related AI technologies did not meaningfully contribute to the 2.2 percent GDP growth recorded last year.

The assessment contrasts with optimistic projections about AI’s macroeconomic contribution and aligns with similar caution expressed by analysts at Morgan Stanley and JPMorgan Chase. The reporting notes that large technology companies including Amazon, Google, and Microsoft have announced major data-center expansion plans that will require substantial computing hardware purchases over the coming years.

Analysts estimate that roughly three-quarters of projected Big Tech capital expenditure could contribute directly to GDP growth in Taiwan and other Asian technology manufacturing hubs. The context also cites ongoing US efforts—across successive administrations—to reduce dependence on semiconductors and components manufactured in Asia, alongside competing political claims about whether AI investments are supporting US growth.