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

Dow tumbles nearly 800 points and oil surges as Iran conflict spills beyond the Middle East | CNN Business

War-risk fear, not U.S. governance, drove a sudden repricing that dragged stocks down and pushed oil to its highest level since mid-2024.

Economy

Mar 5, 2026

Sources

https://edition.cnn.com/2026/03/05/investing/us-stocks-oil-iran

Summary

U.S. stocks fell sharply and oil prices surged as fears of a prolonged conflict with Iran intensified market volatility. The episode shows how global security shocks can rapidly reprice risk across U.S. financial markets without any intervening domestic policy action. Households and businesses face higher energy costs and greater economic uncertainty as oil supply disruption risk concentrates around the Strait of Hormuz.

Detail

U.S. markets declined as volatility increased amid concerns about a prolonged war with Iran. The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed down 785 points (1.61%) after falling more than 1,100 points earlier in the session, with some recovery in afternoon trading. The S&P 500 fell 0.56%, and the Nasdaq declined 0.26% after paring earlier losses.

Oil prices rose sharply. U.S. crude jumped 8.5% to just over $81 per barrel, the largest single-day gain since May 2020. Brent crude increased 4.93% to $85.41 per barrel. For the week, U.S. crude and Brent gained more than 20% and 17%, respectively.

Market concern focused on potential disruptions to oil flows through the Strait of Hormuz, a narrow waterway off Iran’s coast through which about 20% of global oil consumption typically passes each day.

Norms Impact

Trump Accused of Using ChatGPT to Create Tariff Plan After AI Leads Users to Same Formula: ‘So AI is Running the Country’

If U.S. tariffs are being set by an undisclosed AI-style deficit formula, national trade power is being exercised without transparent methodology or accountable decision-making.

Executive

Apr 3, 2025

Sources

https://www.latintimes.com/trump-accused-using-chatgpt-create-tariff-plan-after-ai-leads-users-same-formula-so-ai-579899

Summary

Internet users and commentators alleged the Trump administration’s tariff percentages mirror a simple formula produced by ChatGPT when prompted to set a minimum tariff of 10%. The tariff-setting process is portrayed as shifting from disclosed economic methodology to an opaque, tool-driven heuristic tied to trade-deficit ratios. The immediate consequence described is market turmoil, including a sharp one-day drop in major indexes as trade policy signals destabilize expectations.

Reality Check

Letting opaque, unverified calculations drive trade policy sets a precedent where executive economic power can be exercised without traceable reasoning, and that instability hits our jobs, savings, and rights through market shock. On this record, the conduct is not clearly criminal: using an AI tool to draft a policy heuristic is not itself fraud, and the text provides no evidence of false statements made to obtain money or property that would anchor federal wire fraud (18 U.S.C. § 1343) or securities fraud theories. The democratic injury is governance-by-black-box—policy made without disclosed inputs, sourcing, or review—leaving the public unable to audit whether decisions reflect lawful analysis or arbitrary automation. When markets move on that kind of nontransparent state action, accountability collapses precisely where constitutional democracy requires it most: in decisions that bind the nation and punish or reward whole sectors.

Media

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Detail

Online commentary following the Trump administration’s “Make America Wealthy” event on Wednesday alleged that the tariff percentages presented align with a formula generated by ChatGPT in response to a prompt about creating an “easy way” to set tariffs based on trade deficits with a minimum of 10%.

Political commentator Destiny posted that the rates appear to be calculated by dividing the U.S. trade deficit with a country by U.S. imports from that country, or applying 10%, “whichever is greater,” and attached a screenshot of an exchange with the AI tool that produced a proportional tariff formula.

John Aravosis posted a TikTok video describing the same calculation method, stating the tariffs could be derived by taking the U.S. trade deficit with a country divided by total imports from that country into the United States. The reporting also noted market reaction the next day, with the S&P 500 falling more than 4% and the Nasdaq more than 5%, described by an Academy Securities strategist as a “disaster,” as reported by The New York Times.