The Party for Socialism & Liberation (PSL) is promoting a May 1 "general strike" aimed at disrupting economic activity across the U.S., framing it as acoordinated effortto pressure the Trump administration.
"The prospect of a nationwide shutdown terrifies the billionaire class, and it is what can really stop Trump in his tracks," PSL wrote on X.
PSL added that recent nationwide protests demonstrated opposition, and said left-wing nonprofits are now mobilizing for a larger action on May 1.
General strike threats come amid broader scrutiny of left-wing nonprofits pushing for a color revolution against Trump.
A 2023 report by The New York Times noted that Marxist billionaire Neville Roy Singham has been linked to PSL and is aligned "with the Chinese government media machine and is financing its propaganda worldwide."
From a national security perspective, a coordinated general strike to crash the economy - or, really, destroy capitalism, because that's the intended end goal - could create localized disruptions across critical logistics networks, including transportation, ports, energy systems, and manufacturing. In more extreme scenarios, prolonged strikes on critical logistical nodes could disrupt supply chains critical to defense and infrastructure.
Nationwide strike threats come as ongoing conflicts across Eurasia, including the Russia-Ukraine war and the ongoing US-Iran conflict, have transformed these areas of the world into warzones, in which the U.S. is a critical supplier of weapons.
Who benefits in a general strike if the U.S. economy comes to a halt?
The prospect of a large-scale domestic work stoppage may suggest that China is waging asymmetric warfare through the Singham nonprofit network, as Beijing is furious about the energy shock at the Hormuz chokepoint following the Gulf conflict.
All eyes remain fixated on the impending US-Iran talks in Islamabad, but big things are also happening Friday in Beijing, and they have direct impact on another potential global flashpoint: Taiwan.
While Washington potentially gets bogged down in another Middle East quagmire (if talks don't go well and there's no offramp), Chinese leader Xi Jinping has welcomed the leader of Taiwan’s main opposition party for a rare direct meeting in the Chinese capital.
The symbolism of the timing can't be missed, as Xi invited Nationalist Party Chairwoman Cheng Li-wun to China ahead of the planned big mid-May summit with President Trump in which the Chinese leader could continue a push to dilute Washington's support for Taiwan.
This is all about steering self-ruled Taiwan into China's orbit, and Beijing asserting political power to do so in the face of the Trump administration, after China has long stated its official policy of reunification to the mainland through political means.
By hosting Cheng, Xi is also presenting himself as a force for stability who can be entrusted with ensuring peace - the WSJ has commented - and we might add with the image of 'Taiwan's willing participation' - at a moment the Middle East is on fire largely as a result of American policy and quickness to result to force and surprise attacks.
Xi and Cheng expressed a desire for a "peaceful" resolution to the many decades-long Taiwan crisis, and posed for photos at the Great Hall of the People. They engaged in public remarks but also held a private, closed-door meeting.
Cheng emphasized in words to reporters that Chinese and Taiwanese officials should work to "transcend political confrontation and mutual hostility." She stated, "Instead, it should become a strait that connects family ties, civilization and hope – a symbol of peace jointly safeguarded by Chinese people on both sides."
Her rhetoric was tinged with familiar Chinese Communist Party talking points as she heralded China's supposed eradicating of absolute poverty while seeking to achieve the "great rejuvenation of the Chinese nation".
Among the more notable points were related to 'external intervention' - a not so stealthy reference to American power projection in southeast Asia:
"It is hoped that through the tireless efforts of our two parties, the Taiwan Strait will no longer be a focus of potential conflict, nor will it become a chessboard for external intervention," she said.
Xi and Cheng both agreed that her Kuomintang party is ready to work with Beijing to achieve peace across the Taiwan Strait.
Cheng is the highest-ranking Taiwanese leader to meet Xi since President Ma Ying-jeou talked with the Chinese leader in Singapore in 2015. They met again in China two years ago when Ma was a private citizen.
Both Cheng and Ma are members of the Kuomintang, the conservative-leaning Taiwanese political party that advocates for greater engagement with China by Taiwan’s self-ruled democratic government.
As for Xi, he held up Taiwan and China's shared history and culture, stating that "people of all ethnic groups, including Taiwanese compatriots," had "jointly written the glorious history of China."
Xi stressed, "All sons and daughters of China share the same Chinese roots and the same Chinese spirit. This originates from blood ties and is deeply embedded in our history – it cannot be forgotten and cannot be erased."
Taiwan's ruling government and officials have meanwhile complained of the Friday meeting, "It basically gives China a chance to bully Taiwan behind closed doors."
And Taiwan Deputy Foreign Minister Chen Ming-chi said Friday that China can send a clear message of peace but only if it "stops sending warplanes and ships around Taiwan now."
A Silicon Valley lawmaker wants to require robotaxis like Google’s Waymo to hire human operators to be on standby locally in case the system goes haywire – like it did last winter when a blackout in San Francisco created a logjam ofparalyzed robot cars.
The legislative push — which Waymo described as potentially crippling — comes after the company’s chief safety officer Mauricio Peña sparked outrage for admitting in US Senate testimony that the crucial human helpers it relies on live in the Philippines. The admission came as lawmakers grilled the company after one of its vehicles struck a child walking to school in Santa Monica.
State Sen. David Cortese, a San Jose Dem, says his new bill would ensure tech companies react more quickly during emergencies and keep robotaxis from blocking the path of emergency vehicles.
A Silicon Valley lawmaker wants to require robotaxis like Google’s Waymo to hire human operators to be on standby locally.Gado via Getty Images
“Unfortunately, reports of AVs obstructing traffic, competing with first responders, and driving through active law enforcement activities continue to abound,” Cortese said as he introduced the legislation earlier this week.
Humans need to be based nearby to address “ambiguous situations” in real time, he added.
Cortese’s bill would require autonomous-vehicle companies to hire remote drivers and assistants based in the US and licensed in California, and mandate a staffing ratio of one human for every three vehicles.
Under the proposed legislation, a trained autonomous-vehicle worker would be required to arrive on scene within 10 minutes if called. Each robotaxi would also need a manual override option to allow public-safety officials to take over, though similar capabilities already exist.
The proposal advanced out of the state Senate Transportation Committee with a 7-2 vote.
State Sen. David Cortese, a San Jose Democrat.Xavier Mascarenas/TNS via ZUMA Press Wire / Shutterstock
Waymo, run by co-CEOs Tekedra Mawakana and Dmitri Dolgov, currently operates about 3,000 vehicles nationwide, while roughly 30 other companies have pending permit applications.
Waymo and other industry representatives called Cortese’s bill overkill and said they’re already addressing similar safety requirements, the San Francisco Chronicle reported.
Industry lobbyist Sarah Boot said existing California regulations already require companies to continuously monitor each autonomous vehicle, according to the report. She added that starting in July, human operators will be required to respond to emergency personnel within 30 seconds and move a vehicle, if instructed, within two minutes or face a report to the state Department of Motor Vehicles.
“We should not layer on a second overlapping system before the first one is even implemented,” Boot said at a recent hearing, adding that companies have spent the past two years developing compliance programs to meet the new rules.
Waymo is run by co-CEO Tekedra Mawakana.Getty Images for TechCrunch
She said a provision in Cortese’s bill to halt operations for companies that violate the requirements three times could make for a de-facto ban on the state’s autonomous-vehicle market.
State Sen. Scott Wiener, a Democrat from San Francisco, said requirements like the 10-minute response mandate were overly rigid.
“I wish I could get around San Francisco in 10 minutes,” Wiener said. “I can’t.”
Meagan Subers, a lobbyist for the California Professional Firefighters union, said the bill would help prevent robotaxis from blocking fire station access or parking on fire hoses, according to the Chronicle.
Google’s AI-generated search results are spewing out tens of millions of inaccurate answers per hour – evenas the tech giant siphons visitors and ad revenuefrom cash-strapped news outlets, according to a bombshell analysis.
To test the accuracy of Google’s AI Overviews, startup Oumi reviewed 4,326 Google search results generated by Google’s Gemini 2 model and the same number of results generated by its more advanced Gemini 3 model.
The analysis found that the models were accurate 85% and 91% of the time, respectively.
With Google expected to handle more than 5 trillion searchers in 2026 alone, that means AI Overviews are spitting out fake news at a rate of hundreds of thousands of mistakes every single minute – with users left none the wiser.
“Google AI Overviews have been a disaster for publishers who rely on clicks to fund the production of quality journalism, but they also let down users looking for accurate information,” said Danielle Coffey, president and CEO of the News/Media Alliance, a trade group that represents more than 2,000 news outlets including The Post.
The wrong answers included several basic fumbles, such as misstating the year in which musician Bob Marley’s home was converted into a museum, misstating the year that former MLB relief pitcher Dick Drago died, and claiming there was no record of Yo-Yo Ma being inducted into the Classical Music Hall of Fame even though he was in 2007, according to examples Oumi provided to the Times.
AI Overviews have appeared at the top of Google search results since 2024, while the traditional set of blue links to news outlets are effectively buried out of sight. Publishers have long accused Google, led by CEO Sundar Pichai, of ripping off their work to “train” its AI model without proper credit or compensation.
"Algorithmically-generated responses that pull in data from nearly every source on the internet simply cannot be trusted,” Coffey said.
“Publishers spend enormous amounts of time and money ensuring that the content they deliver to their readers is properly fact-checked, while Google’s AI Overviews are produced with no oversight or accountability.”
AI Overviews also has a penchant for citing information from questionable or easily edited sources, such as Facebook pages, blog posts and Wikipedia entries, as though it is fact.
The feature appears easy to trick into spewing fake news.
Google’s AI summaries had gobbled up the information within a day and began claiming Germain had “gained notoriety for their prowess at the ‘news division’ of competitive eating events.”
Oumi’s analysis was conducted between October and February and utilized a well-known benchmark test called SimpleQA, which was developed by OpenAI and is used to assess the accuracy of AI models.
While the accuracy improved in the jump from Gemini 2 and Gemini 3, Oumi’s research showed that AI Overviews has gotten worse about correctly citing where it found information.
Google CEO Sundar Pichai appears at an event.Bloomberg via Getty Images
The percentage of AI Overviews answers that were “ungrounded,” or where the links provided by Google did not back up the information included in the AI summary, jumped from 37% in Gemini 2 to 51% in Gemini 3, the report said.
A Google spokesperson said Oumi’s study has “serious holes” – in part because the SimpleQA benchmark test includes inaccurate information within its own dataset.
The company also questioned Oumi’s reliance on its own in-house AI model, dubbed HallOumi, to conduct the analysis, despite the risk that it could also make errors.
“It uses one AI to grade another on an old benchmark that is known for being full of errors, and it doesn’t reflect what people are actually searching on Google,” the spokesperson said. “AI Overviews are built on our Gemini models, which lead the industry in accuracy, and they clear the same high-quality bar that we have for all our Search features.”
As The Post has reported, AI Overviews has struggled to provide accurate information since its launch, previously advising users to add glue to their pizza sauce and touting the “health benefits” of tobacco for kids.
The State Department reached a landmark legal settlement with conservative media outlets to not “censor” their constitutionally protected speech — as was documented during the Biden administration.
A consent decree, signed off by a judge and filed Wednesday in a Texas federal court, will force the State Department to no longer throttle online engagement or seek to “fact check” American media for exercising their First Amendment rights, with exceptions for “obscenity, incitement to imminent violence or speech integral to criminal conduct.”
The decree will remain in effect until Jan. 31, 2036, and also mandate trainings for State employees and grantees to make them aware of their free speech-protection obligations.
The New Civil Liberties Alliance brought the suit in December 2023 against the Biden administration on behalf of The Daily Wire, The Federalist and other journalists who had their views suppressed on the COVID-19 pandemic, elections, voting issues, abortion, sexuality and transgenderism.
Daily Wire founder Ben Shapiro, for example, had a June 2023 Facebook reel flagged, in which he mocked former President Joe Biden stumbling over his words before mistakenly spluttering: “We can only re-elect Donald Trump.”
A Federalist writer also hadan articleflagged for reporting on internal emails that showed then-National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director Dr. Anthony Fauci had privately said over-the-counter masks at drug stores aren’t “effective” in keeping COVID at bay.
The suit alleged that, under the Biden administration, the State Department had both funded and promoted the development of technologies by private companies that were later used by social media companies or outside-of-government entities to suppress speech online.
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche added that the “settlement is righting the historic wrong that they [the Biden administration] perpetrated against Americans, and today we say ‘never again’ will we tolerate these injustices.”ZUMAPRESS.com
“Today marks an important day for preserving free speech in the digital era,” said Daily Wire CEO Caleb Robinson. “The US government has acknowledged its censorship structures under the Biden administration, and will now be subject to limitations on similar behavior in the future.”
Acting Attorney General Todd Blanche added that the “settlement is righting the historic wrong that they [the Biden administration] perpetrated against Americans, and today we say ‘never again’ will we tolerate these injustices.”
President Trump had signed an executive order in January 2025 aimed at reversing the Biden administration’s actions that “trampled free speech rights by censoring Americans’ speech on online platforms.”
Lawyers in the Biden Justice Department downplayed the claims and opposed the suits in court — but that stance was reversed after Trump’s return to the White House.
Much of the content at issue had been flagged bythe State Department’s Global Engagement Center, which Secretary of State Marco Rubio shut down in April 2025 over censorship concerns and a move by Congress to yank its funding.
GEC had “spent millions of dollars to actively silence and censor the voices of Americans they were supposed to be serving,” Rubio said at the time, ripping the Biden administration for having funded its efforts.
In one instance, it gave a $100,000 grant to the London-based Global Disinformation Index (GDI) in 2021 and 2022, The Washington Examiner first reported, a media monitoring nonprofit that blacklisted at least 10 outlets with right-of-center opinion pages, including The Post, as spreaders “disinformation.”
The April 8 consent decree with the State Department was preceded by an earlier suit between the state of Missouri and the US Surgeon General, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Agency (CISA).
That also ended in a consent decree on March 25 barring the government agencies from threatening social media companies “unless they remove, delete, suppress, or reduce, including through altering their algorithms, posted social-media content containing protected free speech.”
Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.), who brought the case as Missouri attorney general, called it “a massive win for the First Amendment and for every American who believes in free speech.”
“From COVID to Hunter Biden’s laptop to the border, Biden officials at the highest levels of government tried to use Facebook, X, and YouTube as their speech police,” Schmitt said. “This decision locks in Americans’ First Amendment rights, and guarantees that even in the digital age, the federal government cannot deplatform protected speech they simply disagree with.”
Both decrees were agreed to by the Department of Justice and offered to pay attorneys’ fees for the plaintiffs involved. Rather than a monetary award, the State Department agreed not to use tools, technologies or fund outside-of-government entities that “intentionally suppress, censor, demonetize, or downgrade” the US media outlet’s constitutionally protected speech.
