President Trump welcomed the British monarch King Charles III to the White House yesterday and gave a speech that, on its surface, expressed warmth between the two countries. But its true purpose was darker. Trump's speech stamped his imprimatur on an ascendant view of American history and politics'one that is controversial even on the American right, and that walks up to the edge of white nationalism. The analysis Trump endorsed is that America is defined not by its founding values but by its Anglo-Saxon cultural and genetic heritage. This idea has radical consequences, some of which have already manifested under the administration. Trump's sentiment was unmistakable. 'Long before Americans had a nation or a constitution, we first had a culture, a character, and a creed,' he said, proceeding to depict the Founders not as rebels against the English crown but instead its loyal heirs: 'Their veins ran with Anglo-Saxon courage. Their hearts beat with an English faith in standing firm for what is right, good, and true.'...

President Donald Trump and his administration downsized US science by historic margins last year as it reduced the workforce at federal research agencies by tens of thousands of people and terminated thousands of research grants. But another set of cutbacks in federal science has drawn less attention. Across the government, the administration terminated more than 100 independent advisory panels, comprising university scientists and other outside experts who help to guide national science priorities. The cuts ' driven by a February 2025 executive order aimed at shrinking federal bureaucracy ' target committees that agencies rely on to assess biomedical and environmental policy, provide guidance on setting research priorities and ensure transparency in how the government makes science-based decisions. The scope of these committee terminations is unprecedented, a Nature analysis finds (see 'Cancelled committees'). For example, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), which includes the National Institutes of Health, disbanded 77 advisory boards ' more than one-quarter of all its advisory committees ' in 2025. By contrast, in fiscal year 2024, the agency terminated just two committees....

Mike Vichich grew up in Michigan. His family, he recalls, dedicated their lives to public service. His parents were teachers, his uncle was in the FBI, while both sets of grandparents served in the Army. 'Growing up, public service was always a really admirable way to spend one's life and one's career,' he told TechCrunch. 'I have three young kids. I want them to grow up in a country where government can actually get stuff done.' He went on to work in consulting, then launched a consumer company that he sold to Olo for $200 million back in 2021. After his wife gave birth to their third son, he and Brandon Max, a founding engineer at his last startup, began discussing what they wanted to do in this next chapter of their careers. Each idea they had came back to one thing: that selling to the government was really hard. 'We were like, maybe there's something to that.' In 2023, they launched Pursuit, a site that helps companies find and win government contracts. On Wednesday, it announced a $22 million Series A round led by Mike Rosengarten, a general partner at Builders VC and co-founder of OpenGov. The company has raised $25.5 million in funding to date from investors such as Jack Altman (then at Alt Capital), Bill Gurley, and Sam Hinkie at 87 Capital....

In September, FCC Chair Brendan Carr dangled a simple threat: Either ABC would 'take action' against Jimmy Kimmel, or there would be consequences. The network promptly gave in''Great News,' President Trump wrote at the time'suspending Kimmel's late-night show only to reinstate it a few days later amid public backlash. Yesterday, just 24 hours after the president and the first lady publicly demanded that Kimmel be fired, the FCC went after the network once again, ordering an early review of all broadcast licenses owned by ABC's parent company, Disney. In some ways, the situations rhyme. Both involve direct threats to ABC after a Kimmel joke, and both reveal how the FCC has been reconfigured to act on Trump's personal grievances. But having failed in its previous attempt to oust Kimmel, the White House has now lost much of its leverage; this time, Disney has less of a reason to cave. Carr's threat this past fall was a direct response to a joke the comedian delivered during a monologue, which erroneously implied that Charlie Kirk's killer had been a member of the MAGA movement. At the time, Republicans were seizing on posthumous criticism of Kirk to try to censor liberal groups, and Elon Musk and other prominent conservatives soon piled on Kimmel. The FCC told me that its latest challenge stems from an ongoing investigation into the network's diversity, equity, and inclusion practices, 'not any speech.' But the timeline is revealing: The agency ordered the early review a day after the president and first lady expressed their displeasure with a joke Kimmel made on Thursday. (In a riff on the president's age, the late-night host had said that Melania had 'a glow like an expectant widow'; the comment sparked condemnation from MAGA figures after the attempted assassination of top government officials at the White House Correspondents' Dinner on Saturday night.)...