Financial Mindset

A senior White House official said Sunday that Iran’s “new potential leadership” has suggested it is open to talks with the United States after American and Israeli forces  launched a major attack against Tehran , killing the country’s supreme leader and other high-ranking officials. The official, who spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss internal administration deliberations, said President Donald Trump says he is “eventually” willing to talk but that for now  the military operation “continues unabated.”  The official did not say who the potential new Iranian leaders are or how they made their alleged willingness to talk known. Trump told The Atlantic on Sunday that he planned to speak with Iran’s new leadership. “They want to talk, and I have agreed to talk, so I will be talking to them,” he said, declining comment on the timing. The potential future diplomatic opening comes as new details are emerging about  the detailed planning that went into  the ...

Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah  Ali Khamenei  was killed in a major attack on Iran launched by Israel and the United States, President Donald Trump said Saturday on social media. Trump said his death is “the single greatest chance for the Iranian people to take back their Country.” The death occurred after a joint U.S. and Israeli aerial bombardment that targeted Iranian military and governmental sites. The president also said “heavy and pinpoint bombing” was to continue “uninterrupted” through the week or longer. There was no immediate comment from Iran. The assassination of the second leader of the Islamic Republic, who had no designated successor, would throw its future into doubt and raise the prospect of a protracted conflict given Iranian threats of retaliation. Trump in his post called Khamenei “one of the most evil people in history.” Trump said that Khamenei “was unable to avoid our Intelligence and Highly Sophisticated Tracking Systems and, working closely wit...

The ability of the US, Israel and Gulf Arab states to weather Iran’s retaliatory strikes will depend on how many missile interceptors they have — and stocks are most likely dangerously low after intense combat with the Islamic Republic last year. Tehran’s main means of offensive operations is long-range attacks with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones, all of which it  launched  after Israeli strikes in June 2025. This time around, Iran reacted to US and Israeli attacks by almost immediately firing on Israel and countries including Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Bahrain. Defending against such weapons requires an even bigger number of interceptors — typical military doctrine calls for firing two or three at each incoming target to maximize the chances of hitting it. Stocks of missile interceptors could be in danger of running low within days if the intensity of current Iranian attacks persists, according to a person familiar with the m...

The Supreme Court ruled that President Donald Trump’s global tariffs were illegal, but that’s not going to stop the administration from holding on to the money it’s already collected. Sources told Politico officials are weighing various ideas, including discouraging companies from demanding refunds, arguing revenue collected previously is retroactively legal under new tariffs, and letting claimants skip to the front of the line if they give up a portion of the funds they’re owed. The White House did not immediately respond to Fortune ’s request for comment. Last Friday, the top court struck down tariffs invoked under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, upholding decisions from lower courts. Hours later, Trump announced a fresh set of global levies under a different law as well as investigations that are likely to lead to longer-term duties. But the Supreme Court didn’t detail a process for refunding tariff revenue, leaving it to the U.S. Court of International Tra...

Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei says the most important thing he does each day has nothing to do with training AI models or shipping products. Instead, he said, he spends almost half his time working on company culture. “I probably spend a third, maybe 40%, of my time making sure the culture of Anthropic is good,” Amodei said in an interview on the Dwarkesh Podcast earlier this month.  Amodei’s comments offer a rare window into how one of tech’s most closely watched CEOs manages a company that now sports 2,500 employees and is valued at $380 billion . As Anthropic has expanded, it has become nearly impossible for Amodei to weigh in on every technical and product decision, he said. So rather than dig into the finer details, he has tried to focus on the bigger picture: making sure his employees like working for Anthropic; that the company’s mission and values are clear; and that all workers are working toward the same mission instead of against one another, as he said happens at othe...

Federal health care spending has reached a historic turning point. It is now the single largest category of federal expenditures, having surpassed other spending categories including Social Security, national defense and interest payments made to chip away at the national debt. If current trajectories hold, health will be eating up an enormous share of the country’s spending for years to come. The government is on track to spend over $26 trillion on major health programs through 2036, according to the nonpartisan Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget’s review of the country’s most recent fiscal outlook, published Wednesday.  And the numbers are astonishing. The surge will be led by Medicare, which is projected to double in cost from $988 billion in 2025 to almost $2 trillion by 2036. Over the next decade spending on Medicaid and the Children’s Health Insurance Program is also expected to grow by 36%, while subsidies for the Affordable Care Act marketplaces are forecasted to...

The Central Intelligence Agency offered help to potential informants in Iran on Tuesday, providing Farsi-language instructions on ways to safely contact the U.S. spy agency as President Donald Trump mulls  possible military strikes . The  post  is the latest in a series of recruitment pitches  in Farsi, Korean, Russian and Mandarin  that offered secure ways to contact the CIA. The Farsi-language message posted Tuesday to X , Instagram and YouTube , however, comes at an especially uneasy time in U.S.-Iran relations and as the Iranian theocracy faces new protests at home. The U.S. has  assembled its largest military force  in the Mideast in decades as tensions with Iran have risen. Trump threatened military action in January in response to the government’s fierce crackdown on national protests before shifting his focus to Iran’s disputed nuclear program and  warning it to make a deal . Another  round of nuclear talks  is planned for lat...