Bob Burgess

Justice Dept., Under Pressure From Trump, Fails to Build Autopen Case Against Biden

Under pressure from Trump, the Justice Department sought to figure out a way to prosecute Biden or his aides for using an auto pen but prosecutors could find no way to make a case and dropped it, report Mike Schmidt Devlin Barrett @alanfeuer.bsky.social www.nytimes.com/2026/03/04/u...

Judge Orders US to Stop Calculating IEEPA Tariffs for Importers A US judge has ordered the Trump administration halt a key step in the tariff payment process in order to make any refunds simpler after the US Supreme Court struck down the president’s global tariffs...

The Trump administration was still collecting IEEPA tariffs after the Supreme Court said those tariffs were illegal???

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Can war bets on prediction markets like Polymarket offer price signals to the enemy?

@pauljdavies.bsky.social explains the risk to national security 🎥

US Postal Service Taps Restructuring Advisers Amid Cash Crunch The US Postal Service is bringing on restructuring advisers to help it address mounting financial problems that officials say could leave the agency out of cash within a year.

"All options are on the table, including potential cuts to service and staffing, he said."

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

www.history.com/this-day-in-...

Polymarket and Kalshi’s Iran War Wagers Are Ghoulish — and Troubling As bad behavior in finance goes, the idea of insiders betting on the US and Israel attacking Iran is about as appalling as it gets. Cashing in on death and destruction across the Middle East — or anyw...

Polymarket and Kalshi gamifying war and death seems pretty sociopathic to me and the idea of insiders betting on Iran strikes is appalling. But there’s real security risk is sending these price signals too. Seriously, just stop.

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

The US Has Enough Missiles for This War But Not the Next One The decline of missile stockpiles, which spurred the Department of Defense’s arm-twisting in January for Lockheed Martin Corp. and RTX Corp. to boost production, is worsening by the day.

The US won’t run out of missiles during this latest conflict with Iran, but the dwindling stockpile is a wake-up call

The Iran War’s Most Precious Commodity Isn’t Oil The CIA calls it the “strategic commodity” of the Middle East. But it’s not referring to oil or natural gas. What the American spy agency has in mind is far more prosaic: drinking water. Don’t underes...

JAVIER BLAS:

"The Persian Gulf is gifted with a fabulous hydrocarbon endowment, worth trillions of dollars. What its desertic countries don’t have is water. Today, the region relies on nearly 450 (desalination plants) to stop everyone going thirsty."

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Claude AI Helped Bomb Iran. But How Exactly? The same artificial-intelligence model that can help you draft a marketing email or a quick dinner recipe has also been used to attack Iran. US Central Command used Anthropic’s Claude AI for “intellig...

PARMY OLSON:

"But what does 'intelligence assessments' and 'target identification' mean in practice? Was Claude flagging locations to strike or making casualty estimates? Nobody has made that disclosure and, alarmingly, no one has an obligation to."

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Jack Dorsey Is Wrong: Pro-Worker AI Is Possible The fear that artificial intelligence will lead to mass layoffs is spreading. Jack Dorsey, the co-founder of the financial technology firm Block, laid off nearly half of its workforce last week. Citin...

The great @claudia-sahm.bsky.social in @opinion.bloomberg.com:

"In conversations about AI, it’s important to focus less on dystopian scenarios and more on ways to bring about an AI future that fosters shared prosperity."

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Record Numbers of Workers Are Raiding Their 401(k) Savings A divergent economy has given people record retirement savings and more need to dig into them.

"Last year, a record 6% of workers in 401(k) plans administered by Vanguard Group took a hardship withdrawal. That is up from 4.8% in 2024 and a prepandemic average of about 2%, according to Vanguard."

www.wsj.com/personal-fin...

Gasoline prices continue to soar, with prices at the pump rising to $3.20 per gallon on Tuesday and capping the BIGGEST TWO-DAY SURGE SINCE 2005!

Eeep! The lovely team at @opinion.bloomberg.com organized a photoshoot for my daily newsletter.

If you're wondering: Yes, I got a blowout. No, my hair will never do this glorious flippy thing again. So please subscribe here: www.bloomberg.com/account/news...

Sam Altman’s Sloppiness Works in Anthropic’s Favor On Monday, OpenAI Chief Executive Officer Sam Altman, facing pressure internally and out for the deal he reached with the Pentagon to supplant rival Anthropic, conceded he may have rushed into the agr...

DAVE LEE:

"Already, downloads and use of Anthropic’s Claude — which had been a small-time player in the US consumer AI market, with 1.5% share in January — have surged. ...Claude app downloads in the US were up 220% on Tuesday compared with those on Feb. 23..."

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Trump Threatens to Cut Off Trade After Spain Denies Air Base Use US President Donald Trump directed Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent to “cut off all trade with Spain” after the country denied access to its military bases for his bombing campaign against Iran.

The imperial presidency on display:

“I could tomorrow stop — or today, even better — stop everything having to do with Spain, all business having to do with Spain, have the right to stop it, embargoes, do anything I want with it.”

www.bloomberg.com/news/article...

Gasoline prices at the pump are starting to surge higher:

Is Free Trade Worth the Cost in Lives Lost? There is something about manufacturing jobs, and the manufacturing industry, that makes people sentimental. When they think of a factory worker, they think of him (it’s usually a he) as having great b...

ALLISON SCHRAGER:

"If you lose a job to a recession, odds are you’ll find another eventually. But when you lose a job because of a big structural change in the economy, and that change also ravages your community, your prospects are grim."

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Don’t Confuse the Iran War’s MAGA Critics With Most Republicans There’s a joke circulating in political circles opposed to President Donald Trump that encapsulates the dilemma facing some of his most ardent supporters in the wake of ongoing US military strikes on ...

DAVID DRUCKER:

"...there’s only so many (cracks) the coalition can withstand before the MAGA wing of the party loses influence — or shrinks such that it becomes impossible for the next Republican nominee to take the baton from Trump and win the White House."

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Putin Is the Iran War’s One Sure Winner US naval vessels are firing Tomahawk missiles at Iran as they try to destroy the missile launchers and factories on which Tehran relies for its ability to strike back. The calculation is simple: It’s ...

MARC CHAMPION:

"...the ebbing away of Ukraine’s Tomahawk hopes is emblematic of a wider truth, which is that Russia is already a clear beneficiary of President Donald Trump’s decision to go to war with Iran."

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Trump Doesn’t Want Democracy in Iran or Anywhere. He Wants Puppets Absent a “real” strategy in his aggressive foreign policy, US President Donald Trump is nonetheless revealing an emergent style or pattern. From Iran, which he is currently pounding, to Venezuela and ...

ANDREAS KLUTH:

"And yet it is neither too early nor too late to pause and observe what until recently would have been shocking but now seems almost banal: America’s commander-in-chief is no longer a leader of the free world, but just another strongman."

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Iran Strikes Won’t Succeed Without a Real Strategy The president has a long history with Iran: pulling out of the nuclear deal negotiated by his predecessor in 2018, killing a top military commander in 2020, dropping bunker-busters on Iranian nuclear ...

Americans are "owed not just a better explanation, but also a wide-ranging effort by the administration to ensure that the risks being taken by troops in the field, the costs paid by civilians in the region and the damage done to US credibility aren’t in vain."

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Decades of Presidents Ignoring the War Powers Act Led Us Here When you bomb a country and take out its leader, that’s an act of war.

NOAH FELDMAN:

"And it doesn’t matter whether the ruler is morally repugnant or a confirmed lifelong enemy of the US. It’s still a war for purposes of the Constitution, not to mention international law."

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

"...to be effective in the ultimate sense, air power is most likely to succeed when the target government is vulnerable to its population. This is what eventually led to the ends of Milosevic and Qaddafi. And it is a gut question in Iran."

#SNL

Opinion | Trump’s Best Foreign Policy? Not Starting Any Wars He has my support in 2024 because I know he won’t recklessly send Americans to fight overseas.

JD Vance in 2023:

www.wsj.com/articles/tru...

"If a president could invoke national security as a basis to seize powers that do not belong to him, it would not be long before we had no constitutional government left. The Framers knew this and provided specific provisions for circumstances — including war — when national security is paramount."

Trump Has No Power to Nationalize Elections The Trump administration is reportedly preparing an executive order to attempt to nationalize aspects of the midterm elections, despite a clear constitutional provision that assigns congressional elec...

NOAH FELDMAN:

"But that reasoning would not only stretch the Constitution, it would also open the door to genuine authoritarian autocracy.

www.bloomberg.com/opinion/arti...

Trump’s Ambitions for Iran Are Now Clear: He Wants Everything US President Donald Trump never did explain to Congress or anyone else what his justifications and goals would be for attacking Iran. Now, with “Operation Epic Fury” underway, we know. The answer was “everything,” making this a gamble on a scale way beyond anything even this former casino owner has done before.

The US goal for an Iran strike proves to be "Everything." Success can now come only with regime change

Trump’s war on Iran looks a lot like Bush’s 2003 war on Iraq, and we know how that turned out, says @andreaskluth.bsky.social: bit.ly/4u1M1vK

Exclusive | Trump Administration Considers Requiring Banks to Collect Citizenship Information A potential executive order would enlist banks in the Trump administration’s illegal-immigration crackdown.

The Trump administration is weighing an executive order or other action that would require banks to collect citizenship information from customers

Discussions about the potential order have alarmed banks www.wsj.com/politics/pol...