Happy Friday! A disgruntled former Chick-fil-A employee in Texas allegedly visited the restaurant 800 times to process fictitious mac and cheese orders, bringing in about $80,000.
Authorities are investigating him for fraud, but we think his real crime was preferring macaroni and cheese to waffle fries.
And join Jonah Goldberg and Sarah Isgur for a special live recording of The Remnant in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, May 27 at 7:30 p.m. ET! We’re proud to partner with America’s Future for this special edition of The Remnant—Sarah and Jonah will answer life advice questions, so come prepared to ask yours. Following the recording, attendees can participate in a book signing with Sarah Isgur.
Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories
Partial DHS Shutdown Officially Ends
President Donald Trump signed legislation to fund the Department of Homeland Security’s non-immigration enforcement agencies—including the Coast Guard, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the Transportation Security Administration—officially ending the longest partial government shutdown in U.S. history 76 days after funding expired. The House approved the measure by voice vote earlier on Thursday, after the Senate had given it unanimous approval. Coast Guard Commandant Adm. Kevin Lunday told CBS the branch faced more than $300 million in unpaid bills due to the shutdown, including $5.2 million in overdue utility charges. The new funding will run through September 30.
- Immigration and Customs Enforcement and Customs and Border Protection received funding last summer through the One Big Beautiful Bill Act.
- In early April, Republicans backed a plan to provide about $70 billion more for those agencies via a separate budget reconciliation bill, with the House advancing a blueprint on Wednesday.
- Although Democrats have not yet agreed to supply immigration enforcement funding, the measure can pass through reconciliation with 50 Senate Republicans—and Vice President J.D. Vance’s tiebreaker vote—without needing a filibuster.
Federal Reserve Reports Increased Inflation
The personal consumption expenditures (PCE) price index, the Federal Reserve’s favored gauge of inflation, rose 3.5 percent year over year in March, according to a Thursday BEA release, up from 2.8 percent in February. This marks the highest annual PCE inflation reading since May 2023. While higher energy prices driven by the Iran situation likely contributed to the trend, the core PCE—excluding energy and food—also increased 3.2 percent year over year in March, up 0.2 percentage points from February and reaching its peak since November 2023. Both core PCE readings aligned with Dow Jones estimates.
- The BEA also reported its advance estimate for real gross domestic product (GDP), indicating the economy grew at an annualized rate of 2.0 percent in the first quarter of 2026.
- That expansion substantially outpaced the 0.5 percent real GDP growth logged in Q4 2025, but it remains below the gains posted in the second and third quarters of 2025, at 3.8 and 4.3 percent respectively.
- Total GDP stood at $31.265 trillion in 2025, while federal debt held by the public reached $31.216 trillion, pushing the debt-to-GDP ratio above 100 percent for the first time since the immediate postwar period.
Janet Mills Drops Out of Maine Senate Race
Democratic Gov. Janet Mills of Maine suspended her bid for the U.S. Senate on Thursday, more than a month ahead of the state’s primary elections. Mills, 78, trailed her 41-year-old left-leaning populist opponent, Marine and Army veteran Graham Platner, by more than 20 points in statewide polls. By the end of March, her campaign reported a bit over $1 million in cash on hand, versus Platner’s $2.7 million, per Federal Election Commission filings. Mills has served as governor since 2019 and will leave office in January 2027 due to Maine’s two-term limit. With Mills out, Platner will face incumbent Republican Sen. Susan Collins, 73, who first won election in 1996 and is pursuing a sixth term.
- Prior to becoming governor, Mills served two non-consecutive stints as Maine’s attorney general, and before that she spent time in the Maine House of Representatives.
- At a Thursday press conference, Platner lauded Mills’ record as governor and said, “We both entered this race knowing how crucial it is to defeat Susan Collins, and her decision today reflects dedication to that goal.”
- Platner’s campaign shares a communications team with New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s, and has faced controversy over a Nazi SS symbol tattoo on his chest—an emblem he claimed not to recognize—and resurfaced Reddit posts.
Iran Dismisses Chance of Deal
Through state-run media, Iranian Supreme Leader Mojtaba Khamenei reportedly stated that the country would implement “new legal frameworks and management of the Strait of Hormuz,” and would not curtail its nuclear development programs. The message stands as one of the few public statements Khamenei has issued—all in written form—since succeeding his father, Ali Khamenei, after his death at the outset of the war. The younger Khamenei reportedly sustained serious injuries in the same U.S.-Israeli strike that killed his father. Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmail Baghaei on Thursday expressed doubt that the U.S. and Iran could quickly reach a peace agreement, telling state media, “Expecting a quick result, regardless of the mediator, seems unrealistic to me.”
- A U.S. official told Reuters on Thursday that senior military officers would brief Trump, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth, and Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Dan Caine on potential military measures to pressure Iran back into negotiations.
- A senior official with the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps asserted through state media that Iran would respond to any further U.S. attack with “long and painful strikes” against American targets in the region.
Apple Reports Record Q2 Earnings
Apple unveiled its results for the second quarter of 2026, ending March 28, with outgoing CEO Tim Cook calling it the company’s “best March quarter ever.” Revenue reached $111.2 billion for the period, up 17 percent from $95.4 billion in Q2 2025 and just above analyst expectations. iPhone sales rose 22 percent year over year in Q2, and Cook noted that the iPhone 17 lineup is the “most popular in our history,” outperforming forecasts “despite supply constraints.” He also warned that the company should expect “significantly higher memory costs” in Q3 2026.
- Apple’s stock climbed about 3 percent in after-hours trading.
- The company announced last week that Cook will transition from chief executive to executive chairman, with Apple’s senior vice president of hardware engineering, John Ternus, slated to become CEO on September 1.
In November 2025, Austrian programmer Peter Steinberger released a side project called “Clawdbot.” The program—which enables AI models to perform a wide range of tasks, as though it were a real-life assistant—quickly went viral.
With a text, the program—since renamed “OpenClaw” (via a brief stint as “Moltbot”)—can call restaurants to make reservations, schedule meetings, reply to emails, and write additional code to improve its own functionality. And as of late April 2026, the project had 367,000 stars on GitHub. React, the JavaScript library that underpins a large share of the modern web, took more than a decade to accumulate 230,000.
In the U.S., the reaction to OpenClaw was a blend of tech industry excitement—with startups like Poke racing to build consumer-friendly versions—and general trepidation. The platform’s appeal—an always-on agent that can read your emails, browse the web, and execute commands on your behalf—is also the source of its biggest risks: It requires deep access to passwords, credit card numbers, calendars, and inboxes, and extensive read and write permissions.
Meta’s director of AI safety instructed her agent to “confirm before acting” while cleaning up her inbox, but the AI ignored her and deleted hundreds of emails before she could shut it down. If someone is emailing you through OpenClaw, you could, in theory, smuggle instructions into your replies—and researchers have already demonstrated this with serious payloads, getting agents to hand over security keys, configuration files, and entire inboxes.
But in China, personal OpenClaw assistants—or “lobsters,” as Chinese users refer to them, alluding to its logo—garnered a far different reaction. OpenClaw was a massive hit in China, with tech-savvy users starting side hustles—dubbed “lobster raising”—helping others install OpenClaw on their devices. Social communities, outfitted with OpenClaw-themed events and meet-ups, sprang up across the country. Even the elderly joined in on the nation’s Clawmania moment.
State broadcasters have run segments on the craze, and Chinese tech giants began organizing in-person installation events: Nearly 1,000 people queued outside tech company Tencent’s Shenzhen headquarters in March to have engineers install OpenClaw on their laptops for free, with Baidu running a similar event at its Beijing headquarters. On Weibo, Douyin, and Rednote, “raising a lobster” became its own genre, with care guides, tutorials, and monetization tips.
“OpenClaw is quite popular among a very small, enthusiastic community of coders and programmers around the world, but the general American population aren’t really aware of that,” Wesley Wu-Yi Koo, an assistant professor of management and organization at Johns Hopkins University’s Carey Business School, told TMD. “But in China, even average workers are interested in [OpenClaw].”
The differing reactions to OpenClaw reflect a deeper divide: a Chinese public conditioned by decades of breakneck change, plugged into apps suited for AI, and served by an industry optimized to build fast and cheap—and a West with none of that.
Today’s Must-Read
In Other News
Today in America
- The Senate approved a rule banning all senators and their staff from trading on prediction-market platforms, by a unanimous vote.
- The Education Department announced new caps on federal student loans for graduate programs—$20,500 per year and $100,000 total—while increasing to $50,000 per year and $200,000 total for “professional students,” effective July 1.
- The Defense Department reported an “electrical fire” aboard the USS Higgins, a U.S. Navy guided-missile destroyer operating in Asian waters, but it was contained and did not cause injuries.
- Trump withdrew his nominee for surgeon general—Casey Means, a wellness influencer and Stanford-trained physician who did not complete residency—and plans to nominate radiologist and Fox News contributor Nicole Saphier instead.
Around the World
- The British government announced it will provide 25 million pounds (about $34 million) to counter antisemitic violence in the country.
- British prosecutors charged 45-year-old Essa Suleiman with two counts of attempted murder following Wednesday’s stabbing of two Jewish men in London’s Golders Green neighborhood.
- China’s Defense Ministry announced it conducted military drills near the Scarborough Shoal in the South China Sea, a zone claimed by both China and the Philippines. The U.S. and the Philippines had conducted joint drills in the disputed waters just ten days earlier.
- A Hezbollah drone strike near Qantara in southern Lebanon killed Israeli soldier Sgt. Liem Ben Hamo, 19, and wounded another soldier.
- Brazil’s Congress voted to overturn President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva’s veto of a bill reducing former President Jair Bolsonaro’s prison sentence from 27 years to just over two years.
On the Money
- The U.S.-based insurer Cigna Group announced its plan to exit the Affordable Care Act market starting next year, affecting about 369,000 current enrollees.
- American Airlines resumed daily flights from Miami to Caracas, Venezuela—the first direct services between the two nations since 2019.
- Hershey noted rising demand for its mints and gum linked to GLP-1 weight-loss drugs.
- Alex Mashinsky, founder of the bankrupt Celsius Network, accepted a permanent ban from the digital-assets industry as part of a $10 million FTC settlement, joining the 12-year prison sentence he already serves for fraud.
Worth Your Time
- “Silicon Valley Is Bracing for a Permanent Underclass” (New York Times)
- Michael Schuman on why young Chinese professionals feel increasingly isolated and lonely. (The Atlantic)
- Justin Chang reviews The Devil Wears Prada 2. (The New Yorker)
- David Platzer reviews a Louvre exhibit pairing Michelangelo and Rodin—and traces the non finito aesthetic that traveled from one master to the other across four centuries. (New Criterion)
- Zvi Mowshowitz shares his list showing “the most important charts in the world.” (Don’t Worry About the Vase)
- Out today: The Devil Wears Prada 2, One Spoon of Chocolate, and Animal Farm in theaters, Widow’s Bay on Apple TV+, Glory on Netflix, and new music from Kacey Musgraves, Tori Amos, The Black Keys, Maya Hawke, Kneecap, American Football, The Claypool Lennon Delirium, Sevendust, Young the Giant, Melanie C, Laibach, Hiss Golden Messenger, ERNEST, Venom, and Toadies, everywhere good music is found.
Presented Without Comment
New York Post: Megan Thee Stallion’s Fans Are Contacting Etsy Witches To Curse Ex Klay Thompson After Split
Also Presented Without Comment
The Guardian: U.S. Family Reunited With Pet Cat Seven Years After It Was Lost: ‘We Always Thought About Him’
