September 25, 2026 at 3:00 PM EDT
The Coming AI Meltdown

The Coming AI Meltdown A new report to be presented today at the Brookings Institution shows that the total cost of the AI build-out through 2032 will be $10.3 trillion. That amounts to 3.63 percent of GDP per year, many times that of previous large-scale infrastructure investments, from the 19th-century canals, the railroads, telephone, and electric grids, to the interstate highway system.

September 25, 2026 at 5:30 AM EDT
Republicans Had 690 Days to Oppose Trump

Republicans Had 690 Days to Oppose Trump This article was featured in the Daily Prospect newsletter. Sign up for it here. After a notable absence, an anti-war movement has emerged to finally challenge a president over the unpopular conflict in Iran. Not in the streets so much, but in ads and statements from Republicans trying to salvage their doomed election campaigns.

September 25, 2026 at 5:20 AM EDT
After Missouri, Mid-Decade Redistricting May Die a Natural Death

After Missouri, Mid-Decade Redistricting May Die a Natural Death Read the top story of the day in your inbox. Sign up for the Daily Prospect newsletter here. On Monday, the Eighth Circuit Court of Appeals further confounded Missouri's ongoing mid-decade redistricting debacle. The three-member federal panel sided with a lower federal court and directed the state to use a new map gerrymandered in 2025 and specially designed to propel Democratic Rep. Emanuel Cleaver into retirement""part of President Trump's effort to secure the largest possible advantages for Republicans in the midterm elections.

September 25, 2026 at 5:10 AM EDT
Leon Black Is Not Very Interesting

Leon Black Is Not Very Interesting This article appears in theOctober 2026issue ofThe American Prospectmagazine.If you'd like to receive our next issue in your mailbox, pleasesubscribe here. Financial journalist William Cohan is known for his "as told to" style, quoting at length from the Wall Street insiders he interviews so readers feel like they're in on the action. At its best, the results help to reveal the way our modern masters of the financial universe think, and it garners a few scoops, too. But it's not conducive to telling an actual story in a compelling or critical way, as Cohan's latest book, the bloated Money to Burn: The Unvarnished Truth About Leon Black, Apollo, and the Rise of a New Wall Street, demonstrates.

September 25, 2026 at 5:00 AM EDT
Private Equity Landlords Double-Dipping in Imminent Bailout

Private Equity Landlords Double-Dipping in Imminent Bailout Last month, I reported on a "highly likely" multibillion-dollar federal bailout that would settle a five-year-long court battle between predominantly corporate landlords and the feds over the national eviction moratorium imposed during the COVID-19 pandemic. Since that time, the number of rental property owners seeking a piece of the action has grown, with nearly a thousand landlords signing on over the past few months. Plaintiffs in the case initially sought $26 billion, though that's come down over the years. In all likelihood, the final number will fall between $2 billion and $3 billion, which still would rank among the biggest payouts of its kind.

September 24, 2026 at 12:38 PM EDT
Judges Reject ICE's Underhanded Attempt to Maintain Third-Country Removals

Judges Reject ICE's Underhanded Attempt to Maintain Third-Country Removals A Peruvian man threatened with removal to the Central African Republic is safe for now after an appeals court reiterated late Wednesday night that its decision last week overturning the Trump administration's third-country removal policy was effective immediately. But hours after that decision came down, flight data shows an ICE charter jet landed in two known third-country removal "host" countries in Africa, while another appeared to be heading toward the continent, raising the possibility that other immigrants may have been or are about to be removed unlawfully.

September 24, 2026 at 5:30 AM EDT
Trump Administration Ignores Statutory Deadline to Declassify FISA Court Opinion

Trump Administration Ignores Statutory Deadline to Declassify FISA Court Opinion This article was featured in the Daily Prospect newsletter. Sign up for it here. It has been almost two weeks since the statutory deadline to declassify a potentially damning Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) opinion passed on September 13.

September 24, 2026 at 5:15 AM EDT
The New Union Way to Build Progressive Power

The New Union Way to Build Progressive Power Read the top story of the day in your inbox. Sign up for the Daily Prospect newsletter here. Labor leaders in three swing states, Maine, North Carolina, and Texas, have launched a very promising initiative called the "Contract with Working America." The idea is to use a deep canvass""extensive in-depth conversations""to learn what's on the minds of working families, and then distill the results into an explicit plan of action that reflects actual worker views rather than top-down policy wonkery. The canvass has already reached hundreds of thousands of union members and nonmembers.

September 24, 2026 at 5:00 AM EDT
The Paramount Settlement Started With Trump

The Paramount Settlement Started With Trump This article originally appeared at The Sling, a source for economic analysis and competition policy research. We are witnessing the collapse of antitrust enforcement at the federal level under the second Trump administration. State enforcers have attempted to fill the void. But absent a muscular federal cop on the beat, state efforts will often be in vain. The exceedingly weak settlement between Paramount and the states, announced on Monday by the attorney general of California, illustrates this dynamic. In return for dropping their merger challenge, the states secured the creation of an editorial board, appointed by Paramount CEO David Ellison, to monitor the content of CBS and CNN. In other words, the states got nothing.

September 23, 2026 at 3:00 PM EDT
Kamala Harris for President Again?

Kamala Harris for President Again? The other day, California's lame-duck Gov. Gavin Newsom made what looked like a high-minded promise in an interview with CNN's Jake Tapper. If Kamala Harris ran for the Democratic presidential nomination in 2028, Newsom said, he would not run.

September 23, 2026 at 2:08 PM EDT
ICE Is Trying to Ignore Court's Decision Striking Down Third-Country Removals

ICE Is Trying to Ignore Court's Decision Striking Down Third-Country Removals Immigration and Customs Enforcement officials are trying to expel at least one immigrant to a country he's never been to, despite a federal appeals court smacking down the Trump administration's "third-country removal program" last week, new court documents show.

September 23, 2026 at 5:30 AM EDT
AI Safety Needs More Evidence and Less Speculation

AI Safety Needs More Evidence and Less Speculation A lot of rich and influential people have suddenly become very worried about artificial intelligence models' danger to humanity, thanks to several recent episodes in which various AI "agents" carried out hacks of other websites and systems. OpenAI's Sam Altman, Anthropic's Dario Amodei, and xAI's Elon Musk all now agree that the government needs to help them set up a cartel in violation of antitrust law""er, I mean, "pace the frontier."