Microsoft Meltdown

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The Microsoft outage that began yesterday lasted long into Friday morning, leaving Outlook, Teams, and Copilot unreachable for millions of users at businesses and government agencies across the globe. Microsoft has restored some functionality but has not fully repaired the systems that many organizations rely on to conduct business.

Our Tech editor Colin Madine says this episode is indicative of a cultural problem at Microsoft, where all the major talent is getting assigned to the hot trend of AI development, and the “boring” job of keeping the email servers running is seen as career stagnation. The company’s tens of thousands of layoffs in the past few weeks have probably culled many old-guard employees who knew these systems — the backbone of their core products — inside and out.

Van Hollen vs. Schumer: Fight!

After playing coy for the past week, Sen. Chris Van Hollen (D-MD) has officially thrown his hat in the ring to challenge Chuck Schumer (D-NY) to take over the Senate Democrats’ caucus. Virtually all of the young progressives in Congress have pushed Van Hollen to challenge the establishment liberal, who has led Senate Democrats for the past ten years — claiming he’s too old, out of touch, and dragging his feet on the radical changes they want to impose on the federal government.

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Van Hollen blew up his national name recognition in Trump’s second term by traveling for a photo op with a wife-beating, human-trafficking illegal alien who got deported to El Salvador. The Democrat has said he wants to address far-left policy goals like abolishing the filibuster and defunding ICE.

Blame Lutnick?

There is now a counternarrative emerging in Jensen Huang’s exit from Nvidia: we don’t know for sure that his mistress Alice Huang was a Chinese spy.

That is the thesis of a post from Trump’s former AI Czar David Sacks, which sent shockwaves through the Nvidia discourse Thursday night. However, he does present a bit of a straw man; the idea that she may have been working for CCP intelligence is not based solely on the fact that she is “a successful Chinese businesswoman,” as he claims. She also used to work for the government as a TV reporter for state media.

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At the same time, several lawmakers are pointing fingers at Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick, who was close with Huang and reportedly fought behind the scenes to weaken restrictions on Nvidia’s chip sales to China.

In a letter sent Thursday, the top Democrats on the Senate Finance and House Ways and Means committees accused Lutnick of ignoring the “obvious national security threat” inherent in the Huang-Huang affair. Republican senators Jim Banks and John Kennedy both said on cable news last night that Lutnick needs to testify about greenlighting billions in sales to Ms. Huang’s former company Megaspeed.

As this mystery unfolds, many Nvidia employees are demanding Huang’s return to the company. A post on an internal comms page has been flooded with over 1,600 comments asking the board to wait until its third-party investigations are completed and to give their founder a second chance. “If you believe in the mission, bring back THE boss,” one employee wrote.

Bessent Strikes at Remittances

They’re calling it the biggest no-brainer of all time: Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent is banning immigrants who are on government assistance from sending any U.S. dollars outside the country through remittances.

“If you are wiring the money out of the country, one of two things must be true,” Bessent told Fox News’s Laura Ingraham. “You’re either getting too much money and your benefits must be cut, or you’re part of this conspiracy,” referring to fraud schemes and funds sent to foreign terrorist groups like Al-Shabaab.

Like all things propping up the globalist neoliberal empire, we have to ask: How was this ever allowed in the first place?

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Blanche Gets Based

Attorney General Todd Blanche is the latest Trump Cabinet official that has been moved to a military base for his safety. No reason has been divulged to the public, but most threats against the president’s inner circle have been from the Islamic Republic of Iran or from drug cartels.

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Other officials who have relocated for security reasons during President Trump’s second term include Treasury Secretary Scott Bessent, Secretary of State Marco Rubio, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth, and White House Chief of Staff Stephen Miller. Former DHS Secretary Kristi Noem and former AG Pam Bondi were also moved to military housing before leaving the administration.

And, on the subject of the Iran war, President Trump appears confident the U.S. is gaining leverage with its economic pressure and doesn’t need to cut any deals. “The regime is collapsing,” he told radio host Hugh Hewitt on Thursday.