James Carville claims confidence in the Trump administration is down and explains how Democrats can win back support on'The Will Cain Show.' Democratic political strategist James Carville expressed frustration with the state of his party on his podcast Thursday, arguing that Republicans are able to get away with lying while Democrats are held to a higher standard of credibility. Talking to guest Ryan Lizza, a journalist, he said, "People say to me all the time, 'James, why don't we just do like the Republicans do? Just stand up and lie?' Because our f---ing people wouldn't stand for it!" "If I stood up and lied, you would be the first person to say, 'James Carville lost all credibility last night when he said X, Y and Z.'" Carville, a longtime political talking head, was a top strategist for former President Bill Clinton's 1992 campaign. Democratic political strategist James Carville expressed frustration with the state of his party on his podcast Thursday, arguing that Republicans are able to get away with lying while Democrats are held to a higher standard of credibility.

Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy has accused Vladimir Putin of "playing games" after the Russian leader proposed a three-day unilateral ceasefire to coincide with Moscow's Victory Day commemorations. "This is more of a theatrical performance on his part. Because in two or three days, it is impossible to develop a plan for the next steps to end the war," Zelenskyy told a small group of journalists on Friday, in remarks embargoed until Saturday. Russia announced a 72-hour halt in hostilities beginning May 8, but has so far rejected an unconditional 30-day ceasefire pushed by Ukraine and the United States, which is trying to broker an end to the three-year war. Zelenskyy said Ukraine would not be "playing games to create a pleasant atmosphere to allow for Putin's exit from isolation on May 9" when some foreign leaders are due in Moscow for Russia's World War II commemorations.

I feel a troubling kind of opacity in my brain lately--as if reality were becoming illegible, as if language were a vessel with holes in the bottom and meaning was leaking all over the floor. I sometimes look up words after I write them: does "illegible" still mean too messy to read? The day after Donald Trump's second Inauguration, my verbal cognition kept glitching: I got an e-mail from the children's-clothing company Hanna Andersson and read the name as "Hamas"; on the street, I thought "hot yoga" was "hot dogs"; on the subway, a theatre poster advertising "Jan. Ticketing" said "Jia Tolentino" to me. Even the words that I might use to more precisely describe the sensation of "losing it" elude me.

More than 20 people were injured after Russian strikes hit the southern Ukrainian city of Zaporizhzhia. Ukrainian regional authorities said four people were also injured in a Russian joint drone and artillery attack on localities east of Nikopol city in southeastern Dnipropetrovsk region. Russia's Ministry of Defence reports that its air defence units destroyed 10 Ukrainian drones in an hour. Eight of the drones were intercepted over the border region of Bryansk and two over Russian-annexed Crimea. Yury Slyusar, acting governor of Russia's Rostov region, located on Ukraine's eastern border, said Russian air defence units destroyed Ukrainian drones over five districts.

The State Bar of California announced Friday that its embattled leader, who has faced growing pressure to resign over the botched February roll out of a new bar exam, will step down in July. Leah T. Wilson, the agency's executive director, informed the Board of Trustees she will not seek another term in the position she has held on and off since 2017. She also apologized for her role in the February bar exam chaos. "Accountability is a bedrock principle for any leader," Wilson said in a statement. "At the end of the day, I am responsible for everything that occurs within the organization. Despite our best intentions, the experiences of applicants for the February Bar Exam simply were unacceptable, and I fully recognize the frustration and stress this experience caused. While there are no words to assuage those emotions, I do sincerely apologize."

Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent responds to economic uncertainty, breaking down President Donald Trump's fiscal and cryptocurrency goals on'My View with Lara Trump.' FIRST ON FOX: One of the major players in the crypto and artificial intelligence (AI) industries attempting to cozy up to the Trump administration is a longtime Democratic operative and donor who has backed anti-Trump efforts and candidates while working for companies stacked with Democratic activists. Chris Lehane, a veteran political strategist dating back to the Clinton administration, has donated over 150,000 to Democrats, FEC records show, and many of those Democrats have been outspoken Trump critics for several years. Lehane has been a major backer of Democratic Sen. Mark Warner, who voted to convict Trump during his impeachment trial in 2021 and against several of Trump's Cabinet nominees. He also hosted a San Francisco fundraiser for the Virginia senator, along with Open AI's Sam Altman, in March. Warner has been a key figure in the resistance to the Trump administration, including being a vocal critic of the Trump administration's "sloppy" Signal chat controversy and pushing back on the administration's DOGE push against waste, fraud and abuse in government.

Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) operates on a core underlying assumption: The United States should be run like a startup. So far, that has mostly meant chaotic firings and an eagerness to steamroll regulations. But no pitch deck in 2025 is complete without an overdose of artificial intelligence, and DOGE is no different. AI itself doesn't reflexively deserve pitchforks. It has genuine uses and can create genuine efficiencies. It is not inherently untoward to introduce AI into a workflow, especially if you're aware of and able to manage around its limitations.

"This is a war crime." A representative of the Freedom Flotilla Coalition accused "Israel or one of its allies" of conducting what the group says was a drone attack on its ship carrying aid to Gaza. The Israeli government has not responded to the allegations.

The annual meeting of the International Society for Autism Research took place in Seattle this week. The field's premiere scientific conference was scheduled to be held in the Emerald City five years ago, until COVID-19 dashed those plans. This time, U.S. autism researchers face a very different kind of crisis: massive cuts to federal funding, Cabinet members making false statements about the complex neurological condition they study, and a series of confusing and potentially worrisome policy announcements about autism research. In April, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services disclosed that it's planning a 50-million "comprehensive research effort aimed at understanding the causes of [autism spectrum disorder] and improving treatments," a department spokesperson said. The effort was spurred by Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s stated goal of determining the cause of autism, a neurological and developmental condition whose symptoms cluster around challenges with communication, social interaction and sensory processing.

A young entrepreneur who was among the earliest known recruiters for Elon Musk's so-called Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) has a new, related gig--and he's hiring. Anthony Jancso, cofounder of AcclerateX, a government tech startup, is looking for technologists to work on a project that aims to have artificial intelligence perform tasks that are currently the responsibility of tens of thousands of federal workers. Jancso, a former Palantir employee, wrote in a Slack with about 2000 Palantir alumni in it that he's hiring for a "DOGE orthogonal project to design benchmarks and deploy AI agents across live workflows in federal agencies," according to an April 21 post reviewed by WIRED. Agents are programs that can perform work autonomously. "We've identified over 300 roles with almost full-process standardization, freeing up at least 70k FTEs for higher-impact work over the next year," he continued, essentially claiming that tens of thousands of federal employees could see many aspects of their job automated and replaced by these AI agents.