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Does the world need another biography of Rupert Murdoch? It depends what it has to say and who has written it.Bonfire of the Murdochs, by journalist Gabriel Sherman, looks promising. He made his name with an exhaustively researched biography of long-running Fox News head and serial sexual harasser, Roger Ailes. The Loudest Voice in the Room (2014) has 98 pages of endnotes and a team of three fact-checkers. It was made into a series starring Russell Crowe as Ailes. Sherman was also the screenwriter of Donald Trump biopic, The Apprentice, which Tr

Trump is cornered. Iran’s missiles, drones, and nuclear facilities have been severely hobbled, but its regime is still standing. Many of its senior political, military, and intelligence leaders are dead, but they have been replaced by others. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard survives. Iran’s new supreme leader, in his first official message since he took over from his slain father, says Iran will continue to block the Strait of Hormuz by bombarding tankers trying to get through. The closure has caused “the largest sup

The government shutdown precipitated by President Donald Trump’s anti-immigration policies is taking a toll on yet another group of working class Americans — Transportation Security Administration (TSA) workers.“TSA officers received roughly 30 percent of their pay in a paycheck two weeks ago, but, on Friday, they will miss their first full paycheck while still being expected to show up for work, sparking concern that staffing shortages could soon worsen once more transportation security officers (TSOs) decide to seek other employment,” reported The Hill’s Sarah Fortinsky on

At a Pentagon recent press briefing, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth closed his remarks with a reading from the Bible’s Book of Psalms, ending with “Amen.” That was not the first time Hegseth has used prominent Christian declarations in public, and it’s apparently bleeding over to others in the military. Some members of Congress are now calling for a Department of Defense investigation into military officers allegedly invoking the Bible in pursuit of the Iran war.What is clear is that Hegseth and others are putting an evangelical Christian nationalist spin on a range of things, from Charlie Kirk's murder to the military and Iran. That is fraught with implications during a war with a nation where the

One of President Donald Trump’s top economic advisers argued in a Thursday editorial for The Wall Street Journal that the Iran war will lower energy prices.Expert economists who spoke to AlterNet strongly disagree.Peter Navarro, the White House senior counselor for trade and manufacturing and one of the chief architects of Trump’s tariff policy, argued in the Journal that Iran “has imposed a hidden tax” on the economy by limiting their growth and raising prices, a so-called “Iran Terror Premium.” If Iran’s religiously extreme regime is overturned,

The Atlantic reports internal sources are sounding the alarm on the Trump administration removing the military lawyers who would normally be warning against blowing up little girls.“One of Pete Hegseth’s first actions after taking charge at the Pentagon was to fire top lawyers in the Army, Navy, and Air Force — senior officers who the defense secretary said functioned as ‘roadblocks’ to the president’s orders,” reports Sarah

Political consultant and Letters from Leo editor Christopher Hale says Pope Leo XIV has had it with the Rubbermaid human masks and stretched skin that have drowned the White House in the years since President Donald Trump first slid down an escalator.“In Washington, D.C., plastic surgeons report a surge in requests for what the industry now calls ‘Mar-a-Lago face’ — the sculpted, frozen, perpetually thirty-five-year-old look that has become a uniform among Trump’s inner circle,” reports Hale. “Severe jaws, razor-sharp cheekbones, lips that would make Mick Jagger bl

Semafor writer Burgess Everett reports that Trump is being throttled by the specter of calamitous midterm elections, and he’s taking his terror to his Republican enablers in the House and Senate.“The Republican Congress is consumed by a daunting, nearly impossible task: Satisfying President Donald Trump’s desire for new federal voter ID legislation,” writes Everett. Trump’s ever sinking poll numbers are plaguing him, and he’s acting as if the only way he can

President Donald Trump initiated a crusade to gerrymander the House of Representatives to Republicans’ advantage, Democrats responded with their own gerrymandering campaign — and now, one distinguished newspaper argues, democracy in general has lost.“Early voting began in Virginia last week, as Democrats seek the public’s permission to gerrymander the state to the max,” wrote The Wall Street Journal editorial board. They wrote that although the ballot language characterizes the initiative as intended to “restore fai

Former GOP speechwriter Tim Miller says Trump and the Republican Party have some major tampering planned to save them from their collapsing poll numbers in November, but none of it will do them any favors. Republicans are fighting to pass a controversial new bill, the SAVE America Act, which actually lays more onerous voting requirements upon voters and make it more difficult for many to vote. Miller did not have high expectations for the passage of the unpopular bill, but argued it still wouldn’t pull Republ