Trump Threatens ‘Complete Demolition’ by Midnight, and Dark Money Flows Into Midterms

0:00Most careers don't follow the path we're told to expect. So how do the best leaders actually make decisions when the stakes are high and the answers aren't clear? Work Life from Ted is back with a new host, Molly Graham. She goes inside real careers, the trade-offs, hidden truths, and hard lessons that shaped how today's leaders work and lead. Start with her first episode, A Conversation with Adam Grant. Available wherever you get your podcasts. From the New York Times, it's the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. Today's Tuesday, April 7th. Here's what we're covering.

0:37So which is it? Are you winding this down? I can't tell you. I don't know. I can't tell you. Depends what they do. This is a critical period. President Trump is still pressing Iran's leaders to make a deal to end the war. And he's threatening to unleash widespread attacks on civilian infrastructure there tonight if they don't. where every power plant in Iran will be out of business, burning, exploding, and never to be used again. I mean, complete demolition. In a press conference yesterday, Trump again offered few details on what kind of deal he's looking for, other than saying that Iran must reopen the Strait of Hormuz.

1:14Iran has made a proposal, according to Iranian state media. It's a 10-point plan that calls for a guarantee that Iran would not be attacked again, as well as the lifting of all sanctions on the country, among other things. In exchange, Iran would stop blocking the strait, though it would charge a$2 million fee per ship, some of which would go to rebuilding the country. When asked about the proposal, Trump called it significant but not good enough. Also at the press conference... A pilot reborn, all home and accounted for, a nation rejoicing. God is good. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth likened the rescue of a U.S.

1:57airman over the Easter weekend to the resurrection of Jesus Christ. Shot down on a Friday, good Friday, and rescued on Sunday. It was the latest example of Hegseth invoking Christian theology in his statements about the war, something he's done more explicitly than any other top American military leader in recent history. Hegseth, who is directing the bombing campaign against Iran, has often idolized the Crusades, the bloody medieval wars where Christians fought Muslims. He's the author of a book called American Crusade that argues the wars were tragic but justified because they saved a Christian Europe from the spread of Islam.

2:36Pegseth even has a tattoo of the Latin phrase God wills it, which he's described as the battle cry of the Christian soldiers in those wars.

2:48Now, one more update on the Trump administration. This morning, Vice President J.D. Vance landed in Hungary in a last-ditch effort to help prop up the country's right-wing nationalist leader, Viktor Orban. Orban is a friend of President Trump's, and he's become a key figure on the right globally over the last decade or so, as he's cracked down on migrants as well as on activists pushing progressive social causes. He's won four elections in a row, but polls now show Orban is in trouble ahead of elections this Sunday. He's trailing by 10 percentage points or more behind another conservative politician.

3:23Vance, heading to Hungary to try and help, exemplifies the Trump administration's new national security strategy, in which they said they want to align with, quote, patriotic European parties, code for hard right movements. The Kremlin has also been openly trying to tilt the election toward Orban, who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Orban has

3:47hold up funding for Ukraine, and block efforts to sanction Russia.

3:57Across the U.S., hundreds of millions of dollars are already flowing into this year's midterm elections, and a new Times analysis shows just how much of that fundraising hinges on the use of shadowy philanthropic groups. Of the 10 largest individual donations so far, none of them came from an actual person. Instead, what's happening is that wealthy donors are giving their money to little-known non-profits, which then funnel that money to super PACs that back campaigns. The original donors usually stay anonymous. Republicans pioneered this strategy after the Supreme Court cleared the way for big money in politics as part of its Citizens United ruling back in 2010.

4:36And Democrats blasted it. Now, though, the Times has found that in the past few years, it's mostly Democrats who are using the strategy. That's in part because wealthy donors on the left want to avoid blowback from President Trump as they try to defeat GOP candidates. A political advisor called this flow of money a shell game. And another advisor, who's worked with several prominent progressive donors, told The Times they are just using all the tools in their political arsenal, saying, quote, When we get power, we can change all of the rules so that everyone plays nice. But until we have power, we can't do that.

5:21when you google something that little ai generated answer right at the top has become the norm the search engine rolled out the feature in 2024 but the question continues to be how accurate is it recently the times asked a startup that analyzes ai hallucinations to put google's responses to the test. It found this fall the results were accurate 85 % of the time. It tested again in February after Google did an upgrade, and it had risen to 91%. Being right roughly 9 out of 10 times can get you an A, but considering that Google processes more than 5 trillion searches a year, that means it provides tens of millions of wrong answers every hour.

6:04Google itself acknowledges that AI overviews can include errors. It says so right on the page in fine print. Double check responses. But another thing the analysis found is that many of Google's AI answers, even correct ones, were ungrounded, meaning they linked to websites that didn't completely support that information. That makes it challenging for users to check the accuracy themselves if they can't trace where the information came from. Now, a key thing to note here, the best way to efficiently check a large number of AI overview answers, more than 4 ,000 for this analysis, is to use AI for that too, which the startup did in this case.

6:44That can introduce its own errors, and a spokesman for Google called the analysis flawed. For a full look at the report, including how AI overviews can be manipulated, go to nytimes.com.

7:03And finally... Houston, Integrity, comm check. Integrity, we have you loud and clear. The Artemis II mission made it around the moon and back last night. It is so great to hear from Earth again. Checking in with NASA's mission control after being totally cut off for about 40 minutes. There's a future in a really neat place on the moon. In an emotional moment on the capsule earlier in the day, the astronauts made a request to name one of the craters that they could see on the lunar surface. It's a bright spot, and we would like to call it Carol, and you spell that C-A-R-R-O-L-L. They asked to name it in honor of Carol Wiseman, the wife of the mission's commander, Reed Wiseman, who died in 2020 from cancer.

7:48In a live stream from inside the spacecraft, Wiseman appeared to wipe away tears as his team made the request. The astronauts still have a few days left on their mission. They're expected to splash down in the Pacific Ocean on Friday.

8:04Those are the headlines. I'm Tracy Mumford. We'll be back tomorrow.

8:14This podcast is supported by Planned Parenthood Federation of America. Here's a story that's not getting nearly enough attention. Defunding Planned Parenthood has already caused chaos and harm, and access to essential reproductive care is plummeting. Right now, the Trump administration's backers in Congress want to permanently defund Planned Parenthood, forcing even more health centers to close and millions at risk of losing access to care. It takes less than a minute to help. Go to plannedparenthood.org slash defend and make a gift of any size.