Wednesday, July 29, 2026

Donald Trump went on Fox News and threatened to bomb all of Iran's bridges and all of its power plants, declaring the assault could leave all 91 million people without electricity. As the administration rattles sabers, the Federal Reserve weighs rate hikes with inflation and affordability dominating its calculus — a squeeze that lands on workers, not war profiteers. Meanwhile AccuWeather warns that waters near Florida, the Carolinas, Cuba, the Bahamas and Bermuda may spawn tropical trouble in early August, another climate bill coming due.

Congress appropriated $345 million for the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality for fiscal 2026, yet the agency has spent less than $15 million on grants — money for patient safety stranded while the administration guts the state. Across the Atlantic, Europe faces its biggest fires and highest temperatures on record; residents flee, leaders flounder, and one climate expert said, "it will get worse."

An upstate New York district paused deployment of an AI-powered humanoid robot teacher after state officials, educators and residents pushed back — a rare win against the ed-tech sell-off. In Brazil, President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva holds his lead over Flávio Bolsonaro ahead of October's election, even as a cloud of controversies swirled around the conservative challenger.

Senator Jim Risch attached the PEACE in Sudan Act to the annual defense policy bill, hitching sanctions to the war machine's funding stream. Republicans enter the midterms with a half-billion-dollar fundraising edge over Democrats, a gap a new Supreme Court ruling could widen further — billionaire capture dressed up as democracy.