There are reports out of Russia of another high level firing within the defense ministry. This time, President Putin has reportedly sacked the head of Russia's Aerospace Forces, which is the armed services branch responsible for the country's air defenses.

Moscow-based news outlet RBC reports that General Viktor Afzalov has been replaced by Colonel General Alexander Chaiko. Afzalov had first been appointed to the command post in 2023.

However, the Kremlin did not immediately comment on or confirm the shake-up, but it comes amid growing anger among the Russian populace and among leadership following a series of major Ukrainian drone attacks.

In an era of rapidly expanding artificial intelligence, a troubling question arises: can the leader of the world's most powerful state make decisions based not on expert institutions and advisers, but on algorithms designed to flatter and reinforce existing beliefs?

Things are really getting weird, especially in terms of the sovereign illusion of Donald Trump, particularly his social media postings, for example, his AI-generated cartoons depicting him as Jesus or the Pope. This opens a new can of worms that most of us would like to avoid: Is AI in the Oval Office, and who or what is actually driving the actions, calling the shots, and determining the reactions of the US president?

We already know that AI is being used by the military to target and kill, as the proving ground of Gaza has demonstrated in real time; however, that is but the tip of the iceberg. It appears that Trump is letting an AI tool direct his every whim and knee-jerk reaction.

Over the past two years, Israel has lost the support of the American public and is now losing one of its last bulwarks in the political arena — prominent voices in the mainstream media.

The 'Cronkite moment' during the Vietnam War was the night in 1968 when CBS anchor Walter Cronkite said the U.S. was stuck in a "stalemate" and that the only honorable path was to negotiate a withdrawal. President Johnson concluded that he'd lost Middle America and soon decided not to run for reelection.

Israel lost Middle America at least a year ago, according to opinion polls, and it is at last losing what is more important to its support, prominent mainstream voices, the Cronkites of our era.

On April 23, Geoff Bennett of the PBS NewsHour did the unthinkable. He sharply questioned the Israeli ambassador to the U.N. over Israel's (wanton) killings of civilians and journalists in Lebanon.

"How many civilian deaths per Hezbollah target is acceptable? Is it five? Is it 10? Is it 300? Or is there no ceiling at all?"

"What military objective is served by killing reporters?"

A stunning investigative report by Hebrew-language outlet Ynet has laid bare the embarrassing cataclysm not only of the US-Israeli war on Iran, but the Zionist entity's effort throughout to end the Islamic Republic via covert and overt military and intelligence operations. Violent Mossad-orchestrated protests, Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei's murder, and a Kurdish invasion were intended to produce regime change and "total victory" over Tehran. Yet, as Ynet concludes: "what started as a far-reaching Israeli move, rich in imagination, final in its solution, ends in heartache."

In granular detail, the investigation tracks how the Zionist entity's deranged scheme germinated in the minds of Israeli intelligence, military, and political chiefs, before the Trump administration was comprehensively sold on the plot. Along the way, Ynet exposes extraordinary and dangerous levels of delusion and imperial hubris at the highest levels of Tel Aviv and Washington. For example, Benjamin Netanyahu sincerely - and entirely falsely - believed Israel's criminal September 2024 assault of Lebanon, and the June 2025 12 Day War, had decimated Hezbollah and Iran.

This perspective was shared by Mossad, which had been building a vast, dedicated anti-government army in Tehran since 2022. The Zionist entity was delusionally convinced it had the power to collapse the entire Islamic Republic. "Fostering mass protest" and encouraging "armed resistance of minorities" - specifically, Kurds within and without Iran - in "parallel" with assassinating Supreme Leader Ali Khameinei was part of a three-pronged coup d'etat strategy. Netanyahu believed "total victory" over the Resistance was in grasp in every theatre. Ynet reports:

"Overthrowing the regime was the heart of Israel's overall war plan."

The operation was intended to be put into action this June. Yet, in January, with "tens of thousands" of Mossad-directed insurrectionists in the streets of Tehran and other Iranian cities, the Zionist entity believed conditions had sufficiently "ripened" to make a decisive move. Mossad's "influence organization" was birthed in 2022, reaching "operational maturity two and a half years ago." Ynet bleakly boasts of the "effort and sophistication" of the Zionist entity's armed clandestine army of anti-government rioters in Tehran:

"Israel has established its own poison machine. This is a serious weapon system that, if fully operational, can be fatal."

Mossad pitched its braindead regime change plan directly to the CIA, Pentagon Central Command was informed of it by visiting Zionist Occupation Forces chief of staff Eyal Zamir, while Trump got personally lobbied by Netanyahu. The President - "convinced there were no limits to the capabilities of the military system at his command" after Nicolas Maduro's January 3rd kidnap - and his administration were a highly receptive audience. Trump indicated his endorsement of the conspiracy on January 13th, publicly informing Iranians "help is on its way."

A vast US military buildup in West Asia immediately began, while supposed peace talks with Tehran were ongoing. The negotiations were of course a con, intended to lull the Resistance into a false sense of security before the next phase of Israel's intended palace coup commenced. On February 28th, Zionist-American airstrikes rained down on Tehran. Israel and the US firmly believed Iran's leadership had been eliminated or scattered, and the Islamic Republic's command and control system was "severely beaten." But then, catastrophe started to erupt.

Though tempered by the prospect of additional GOP gerrymandering of House districts in the wake of a pivotal Supreme Court decision, Democrats' hopes for a rout of Republicans in the approaching midterm elections are rising after a Washington Post-ABC News-Ipsos poll found that President Trump's disapproval rating is now the highest of either of his two terms in office. Trump's decision to launch a war on Iran is taking a toll -- voters are not only dismayed by his handling of Iran, but also dissatisfied with his work on the economy, which is itself being harmed by the war.

In a survey of US adults taken in the last week of April, 62% said they disapprove of his general performance in the Oval Office. A whopping 76% disapprove of his handling of the cost of living and 66% disapprove of what he's done with Iran. A majority of Americans surveyed expressed disapproval of his handling of every issue covered by the survey.

Warren constantly brands herself as a defender of workers, yet her preferred outcome here appears to have been the complete destruction of a company.

Elizabeth Warren has built an entire political career on presenting herself as the righteous defender of ordinary Americans against powerful corporations.

Every speech is some variation of the same script: she's fighting for workers, fighting for consumers, fighting for families, and standing up to greedy executives and monopolistic corporations that are supposedly rigging the system against everyone else. It is a message carefully designed to make her sound like a populist champion of the middle class while putting a polish on inherently broken socialist ideas.

When her flawed ideology collides with reality, it repeatedly produces outcomes that hurt the exact people she claims to represent. Spirit Airlines may be one of the clearest examples yet.

April 23 became a significant date. The Saudi Ministry of Foreign Affairs issued a statement that was a political bombshell. Riyadh didn't just "welcome" a ceasefire; it proposed a roadmap.

A country that was supposed to become the "Switzerland of the Middle East" has once again been reduced to ruins

Thousands of dead, an occupied south, and journalists dying under Israeli bombs — such is the price of the Israeli prime minister's ambitions. When his voice proved to be secondary during the Iran negotiations, Benjamin Netanyahu unleashed a bloody massacre in Lebanon, trying to bring to life the deranged idea of a "Greater Israel." Only Saudi Arabia's intervention and Riyadh's backchannel diplomacy managed to stop the horror.

The temporary truce with Tehran counts as the end of war, and no congressional approval is needed, the White House has reportedly said.

The US-Israeli war on Iran has already been "terminated," and the Trump administration believes it does not need an extension from Congress to continue the fighting, the Associated Press has reported, citing sources.

The report comes as a deadline mandated by the 1973 War Powers Act rapidly approaches. The legislation limits any military action launched by the president without congressional authorization to 60 days.

The White House insists that, for the purposes of the law, "the hostilities that began on Saturday, February 28, have terminated," an unnamed senior administration official told AP on Friday. Tehran and Washington reached a two-week ceasefire on April 7, with the truce extended indefinitely since then.

Anthropic, which the US Department of War designated a "supply-chain risk" earlier this year, was not part of the agreement

The Pentagon has said that it has reached deals with major artificial intelligence firms to integrate their advanced AI capabilities into the agency's classified networks.

The US Department of War has been actively negotiating with the industry's leaders since the start of the year as it is trying to expand the application of AI in military operations and diversify the range of companies that provide the technology.

It is going ahead with the push despite concerns among experts regarding the ability of the AI to reliably operate within the existing laws of war and its possible use to invade the privacy of civilians in peacetime.

Agreements have been struck with SpaceX, OpenAI, Google, NVIDIA, Reflection, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services and Oracle to deploy their AI systems for "lawful operational use," the Pentagon said in a statement on Friday.

"Artificial intelligence will be integrated into the Department of War's Impact Level 6 and Impact Level 7 networks to "streamline data synthesis, elevate situational understanding, and augment warfighter decision-making in complex operational environments."

It appears the curse of the midterm elections is going to hit the ruling party head-on.

The midterms are still seven months away, and the Republicans must contend with an American voter whose mood has noticeably changed.

After regaining the White House in 2024, President Donald Trump - seeking revenge after being "cheated" of the presidency in the 2020 election - confidently declared victory. His approval numbers never looked better and the Republicans controlled Congress. Meanwhile, the Democrats looked dazed and confused as they struggled to make sense of their loss. Yes, Trump appeared invincible. But that was yesterday.

Trump is certainly aware of the curse that has haunted incumbent leaders for decades which says that they have a high chance of losing the midterms (for the uninitiated, midterm elections are the general elections that are held near the midpoint of a president's four-year term of office). This curse has held true for even popular two-term leaders like Barack Obama, Bill Clinton and Ronald Reagan. To put it bluntly, the numbers do not look very promising for the Republicans at this stage of the game.