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President Donald Trump was caught sleeping during an Oval Office press conference on Thursday — and the internet didn't hold back. The president was speaking with a group of cabinet members about several topics, including health care, prescription drug prices, and the economy, when people started to notice he was nodding off. Social media users picked up on the moment: "They don’t call him Don Snoreleone for no reason," user Mason, an Iraq veteran and political commentator, wrote on X."He’s currently falling asleep in the middle of a press event. Dozing off with his mouth dropping. He’s unwell," Trill Clinton, former deputy director of Intergovernmental Affairs at HUD under the Obama Administration, wrote on X."Just think, this geriatric buffoon holds the nuclear codes," Denison Barb, political commentator, wrote on X."Trump is fighting total war against wokeness as his eyes close and his mouth droops," journalist Aaron Rupar wrote on X. He later added, "Trump is about to hit REM on camera during an Oval Office event. It's just incredible.""Stamina they say," radio and television personality Henry Lake wrote on X.Stamina they say ???? https://t.co/0Buqx1o8bj— Henry Lake (@lakeshow73) April 23, 2026

A former CIA director cautioned that recent missteps by the Trump administration in its handling of the war in Iran could spell "real trouble for the future."Leon Panetta, the former CIA director, said on CNN on Thursday that "badly stalled" talks with Iran will make a military response more likely on both sides."While talks are stalemated, that could be real trouble for the future," Panetta explained. "The longer we are held back from somehow sitting down and beginning those discussions, I think the problem that I see is that the earlier the tendency to respond militarily will be."Vice President JD Vance was supposed to travel to Pakistan to talk with the Iranian side on Friday, but the White House confirmed that he would not go. Panetta said that "we should be sending our representatives to Abbottabad. We should have Iran sending its representatives to Abbottabad. They need to sit down. They need to start talking. There's an awful lot that needs to be discussed."Panetta also spoke about how the sudden departure of John Phelan from his post as Navy Secretary will make the U.S. military look unstable while the United States fights an Iranian naval blockade in the Strait of Hormuz with no deadline."We're in a war. We've deployed a lot of forces," Panetta said. "This is not a good time to have a disruption in leadership. What you want to show the enemy, what you want to show the world, is that we've got our act together and that everybody is operating as a team."

President Donald Trump reacted on Thursday to reports on where negotiations stand with Iran amid the ongoing Israeli-U.S. war. In a post on his Truth Social platform, he argued that reports saying he was uneasy about the ongoing conflict were inaccurate and tried to set the record straight, while also attacking The New York Times and CNN for their reporting. He wrote the following: "For those people, fewer in number now than ever before, that are reading The Failing New York Times, or watching Fake News CNN, that think that I am 'anxious' to end the War (if you would even call it that!) with Iran, please be advised that I am possibly the least pressured person ever to be in this position," Trump wrote. He also tried to claim the outlets had lost their integrity and audience while unleashing threats on Iran. "I have all the time in the World, but Iran doesn’t — The clock is ticking!" Trump wrote. "The reason some of the Media is doing so poorly with Subscribers and Viewers is because they no longer have credibility. Iran’s Navy is lying at the bottom of the Sea, their Air Force is demolished, their Anti Aircraft and Radar Weaponry is gone, their leaders are no longer with us, the Blockade is airtight and strong and, from there, it only gets worse — Time is not on their side! A Deal will only be made when it’s appropriate and good for the United States of America, our Allies and, in fact, the rest of the World."

The artificial intelligence boom has been wildly profitable for tech billionaires and catastrophically hollow for everyone else, a new Mother Jones report said this week. Jeff Bezos, Mark Zuckerberg, Elon Musk, and Sam Altman have built fortunes on AI hype while delivering false promises, toxic platforms, and minimal actual job creation.According to Mother Jones columnist Tim Murphy's investigation, "The AI bubble has been a boon to the portfolios and prospects of the tech world's biggest players. Their companies are vying for hegemony and their net worths are trending toward Mount Olympus."Murphy documented a pattern of deception and excess: "Beyond the hype, you can find a litany of false promises, questionable investments, and just plain decadence, complicating both their predictions for the future and claims to come in peace."Bezos's Project Prometheus AI initiative carries a $38 billion valuation and is "focused on physical AI designed to interact with real-world industrial processes, such as manufacturing, aerospace engineering, and semiconductor production."Meanwhile, Bezos has dismantled the Washington Post after acquiring it in 2013 with promises of a "new golden era." After he nixed a Kamala Harris presidential endorsement, the paper suffered a mass exodus of subscribers, a $100 million 2025 loss, and a 40-plus percent purging of its staff. Yet Bezos still had enough leftover cash to purchase a 246-foot yacht for $75 million to join his previously purchased 417-foot yacht, Murphy reported.Zuckerberg burned through $77 billion before pivoting to AI. Mother Jones reports that 10 percent of Meta's profits came from scam ads — funds that also financed his 4,500 square foot underground bunker in Hawaii.Musk's AI platform X has been hit with allegations of 679,584 antisemitic posts over a one-year period between 2024 and 2025. Musk's Grok generated 1.8 million graphic images of women during a nine-day period last winter as his net worth continued to ascend to $850 billion, the report said.Trump lauded OpenAI's Stargate data centers as a job-creation engine that would "create 100,000 jobs 'almost immediately.'" In reality, however, "only 100 employees needed to operate Stargate's Abilene, Texas, campus once construction is completed," according to the report.Despite a promise to invest $1.4 trillion in AI infrastructure over the next eight years, the company's reported revenue in 2025 came in at $20 billion, a 70-to-1 spending-to-revenue ratio for a company promising to reshape the economy.

Research shows natural hazards linked to climate crisis disrupted 23 elections in 18 countries in 2024Democracy is under mounting threat from the climate crisis, with new analysis documenting how elections are increasingly shaped not only by political forces but also by floods, wildfires and extreme weather.At least 94 elections and referendums across 52 countries have been disrupted by climate-related impacts over the last two decades, researchers found. Continue reading...

Experts say Muslims and other minorities have been disproportionately deleted from the electoral roll ahead of the West Bengal elections this weekMillions of people in the Indian state of West Bengal have been stripped of their vote ahead of a critical state election this week, after a controversial electoral revision described by critics as a “bloodless political genocide” and mass disenfranchisement of minorities.In West Bengal, a total of 9.1 million names have been deleted from the register, more than 10% of the electorate. While many were dead or duplicates, about 2.7 million people have challenged their expulsions, but still been removed. Continue reading...

CNN anchor Jake Tapper pushed Rep. Mike Flood (R-NE) to answer his questions, with the longtime journalist pressing the Trump administration's claims over its objectives in the U.S.-Israeli war in Iran. As President Donald Trump announced an extended ceasefire as the current deadline was set to end, Flood told Tapper during a live broadcast on Tuesday that congressional leaders had been receiving classified briefings surrounding the ongoing conflict in the Middle East.But Tapper didn't stop his line of questioning — multiple times — saying he wanted Flood to answer direct questions about the Iranian regime, its nuclear capabilities and what the plan was for America's military operations. "I guess I'm just confused because President Trump has been saying for weeks that that that he won the war, the U.S. won the war, and [Pete] Hegseth and others have said that the Iranian Navy is at the bottom of the sea and they don't have the capability of doing the missile construction that they did, the ballistic missiles and the nuclear material is underground," Tapper said. "I'm just I'm trying to understand what the metric is other than opening the Strait of Hormuz for this to be over for. You say nobody wants to cut and run. OK. But what still needs to be done?"Flood had a quick response. "Making sure that there is no more nuclear weapons that comes out of Iran," Flood said.Tapper wasn't satisfied with that. "But what's the metric for that? I mean, because it sounds as though they're pretty close to having achieved that," Tapper said. "If the missiles are destroyed the way President Trump and Pete Hegseth say they are." But Flood said that wasn't good enough. "Nuclear pretty close isn't achieved — and by the way, a lot of this is handled in a classified setting with actual metrics and actual updates," Flood explained. "And that is not something that can be shared on CNN or any other network right now," he added. "You know, we are into this now. We have a mission to rid ourselves of, of a nuclear prepared Iran. The people of America have checks and balances and that there's going to be a request for supplemental. There are certain limitations on how long the president can engage in this way. There's going to have to be an opportunity for the White House to share with Congress where they're at. And I know that the guys behind me that are 100% for not only the cattle industry, but national security and safety from a terrorism sponsor. We want it all. We want all of the above. And I think we can have it, but it doesn't happen on a 24-hour news cycle. It happens over time. And it happens when our military leaders can go to bed at night knowing that we don't have to worry about a dirty bomb or a nuclear bomb landing somewhere in Israel or in the United States."

MAGA commentator Scott Jennings had a stinging response to former Fox News host Tucker Carlson's comments that he was regretful for supporting President Donald Trump. CNN anchor Kasie Hunt asked Jennings to comment on Carlson's remarks that he would be "tormented" by his decisions to endorse Trump, which led to a heated exchange between the two during the live broadcast. Carlson had issued a public apology Monday for having supported Trump in the 2024 election, telling his millions of followers that he was “sorry for misleading people.”Jennings shared his thoughts on the move. "I mean, is his preference that Kamala Harris had become the president of the United States?" an indignant Jennings asked. "That will come as a surprise to, I'm sure, a lot of people who used to view Tucker Carlson as a conservative and someone who, you know, had certain kinds of values. And what's he sorry for? That we got a new engagement here that might ultimately lead to taking away nuclear weapons?"Hunt pushed back on Jennings' characterization of the war."We got into engagement, Scott? That is quite a way to put it," Hunt said. "We started a war with Iran.""Is he now claiming he had no idea that Donald Trump held the position that he would never permit Iran to have nuclear weapons, if that's what he's saying today?" Jennings asked. "He's kind of a moron," Jennings added. "I mean, I don't know how else to put it, or he's willfully misleading people. The president was clear he'll never let them have nuclear weapons. We just saw on '60 Minutes' on Sunday night, a broad agreement among the experts. They have 970 pounds of enriched uranium, enough to make 10 or 11 nuclear bombs. This is not acceptable to the president. He had that position back in 2024. He had that position back in the first term. He has that position today to say now that you're sorry, that you elected a president that wanted to take away nuclear weapons from this terrorist regime. I don't get it."