5 – Breaking News & Latest Updates 2026
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Politics Archive

Archives for July 2026

Richard Lawler
Richard Lawler
Trump’s Great American State Fair temporarily shuts down due to the heat.

The “heat dome” covering the US from the Midwest to the East Coast interrupted the Trump Administration’s Freedom 250 event at the National Mall, which shut down for about four hours, citing the temperatures, and said it would reopen at 5PM ET.

The National Weather Service said more than 110 million people nationwide were under extreme heat risk.

Combination image with notice of the Great American Fair temporary shut down, and the NOAA extreme HeatRisk map of the East Coast.
Image: Freedom 250 / NWS
I finally got my Trump phoneI finally got my Trump phone
Dominic Preston
The Verge’s annual summer ‘in’ and ‘out’ list

What’s in, what’s out, and what’s a bit of both this summer.

Mia Sato
Elizabeth Lopatto
Elizabeth Lopatto
“The CEOs don’t like the world they’ve helped create.”

Elon Musk and Joe Lonsdale are doing their best to make sure “the high-tech future will have to be built in a way that blends church, state and market, to the benefit of those most able to seize public resources and turn them to private profit.” The extractive world of today’s technology — harvesting your data and attention, among other things — has created the Texan Ideology.

The Texan Ideology

[The Baffler]

Jess Weatherbed
Jess Weatherbed
Google’s $4.7 billion Android fine has been upheld.

The search giant has lost its final appeal to overturn a record-breaking €4.1 billion (about $4.68 billion) penalty imposed by the European Commission over practices that abused Android’s mobile dominance. The charges date back to 2018, so it’s taken almost a decade to close the antitrust case.

Gaby Del Valle
Gaby Del Valle
DHS won’t say whether it’s keeping a database of anti-ICE protesters.

ICE has denied it maintains such a database, but Mother Jones lays out some shifty wording that suggests Trump administration officials are dodging the question — including a spontaneous mention of the known Terrorist Screening Dataset. Given that 15 Minnesota activists are facing federal charges, it sure sounds like DHS may be tracking protesters after all.

Jay Peters
Jay Peters
This week in the big AI data center buildout.

AI data center projects are continuing to pop up across the US, with frequent opposition from locals concerned about their impact. Here are a few recent articles about the projects: