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Hannah Jewell
Foreign
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the US Launched a new round of military strikes on Iran. That's where we're starting the Seven from the Washington Post, I'm Hannah Jewell. It's Friday, May 8th. Let's get you caught up with today's seven stories. Yesterday, US Forces launched a new round of military strikes on Iran despite fight an ongoing ceasefire. Officials said the strikes were in response to attacks on American warships in the Strait of Hormuz. No American ships were hit in those attacks. The latest violence casts yet more doubt on negotiations for an end to hostilities between the US And Iran. But President Donald Trump yesterday told reporters that the ceasefire was still in effect after the strikes.
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Donald Trump
If there's no ceasefire, you're not going to have to know. You just going to have to look at one big blow coming out of Iran and they better sign their agreement fast.
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Hannah Jewell
Could you give us an update on
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Narrator/Announcer
what is the latest in those talks?
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Donald Trump
No, it's going. The talks are going very well, but they have to understand if it doesn't get signed, they're going to have a lot of pain. They're going to have a lot of pain. What was they want to sign it. I will tell you. They want to sign it a lot more than I do.
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Hannah Jewell
Iran is continuing to block the passage of ships through the Strait of Hormuz and the US Is blocking ships from Iranian ports. That's intended to put pressure on Iran in negotiations. But the Post reported yesterday that US Intelligence says Iran can outlast Trump's blockade for months. The intelligence assessment also found that Iran still has a substantial arsenal of missiles and drones. President Trump's attempts to impose global tariffs suffered another legal blow. That's our second story. Back in February, the Supreme Court issued a ruling that eliminated most of Trump's emergency import taxes. The president quickly imposed replacement tariffs using a different law. But yesterday, a specialized federal court in New York ruled against those replacement tariffs, saying they were unlawful. This comes at an awkward time for Trump. It weakens the president on his core economic initiative. One week before he is scheduled to meet Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing for talks that will focus on trade. China has been a principal target of Trump's trade policies. Even before the ruling, the Trump administration had already said it plans to replace the replacement tariffs with new ones using different legal authorities. Number three. Tennessee lawmakers approved a new congressional map to eliminate a Democratic held seat in the U.S. house. Republicans and Democrats are fighting to redraw voting maps across the country to maximize their advantages in the midterm elections. The latest move took place Yesterday in Tennessee, lawmakers there voted to eliminate a majority black district in the Memphis area, which has long been represented by a white Democrat, Representative Steve Cohen. He is the only Democrat in the state's nine member delegation. Yesterday he accused Republicans of deliberately dividing black voters to reduce their electoral power.
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Somebody who drew the map or told a guy to draw the map because they do it with control computers, somebody told them divide the black vote up in the three districts to where they are a minority and they don't have enough influence to elect a member of their own choosing. That's a mistake. And the people up there were supposed to be working for the good of the state of Tennessee. They working for the good of Donald Trump.
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The vote came in response to a Supreme Court decision last week that weakened the Voting Rights Act. That gave Republicans a free hand to reshape majority black districts that routinely elect Democrats. Tennessee Governor Bill Lee, a Republican, has championed the new map and is expected to give it final approval. Trump is withholding fire protection money from some Democratic led states. That's number four. Colorado is facing a dangerous wildfire season this year after an unusually dry winter. California is also staring down a heightened fire risk. But the two states have something else in they have received scarcely any of the money they expected from FEMA to recover from or prepare for fire disasters. According to internal records obtained by the post, about 1,000 such grants have been held up in Trump's second term, most of them in California and Colorado. By contrast, Florida, Texas and Louisiana have received hundreds of millions of dollars from FE in that time. A White House spokesperson denied that the decisions over these grants were political. There's a key character in Elon Musk's courtroom battle. The mother of four of his children, for years tech executive Siobhan Zillis worked largely outside the public eye as a board member and advisor at the artificial intelligence startup OpenAI. But now she's a central figure in the legal battle between Musk and his fellow OpenAI co founders Sam Altman and Greg Brockman. Musk is accusing them in a lawsuit of betraying the organization's founding philosophy. OpenAI has a content partnership with the Washington Post. Zillis was a key go between as relationships between the co founders grew increasingly strained. She also had a romantic entanglement with Musk, who was her boss before becoming her secret sperm donor. Text messages have revealed her struggle to balance her commitments to work with her unusual relationship with Musk. Zilla's testified this week in the case that has been spilling billionaire secrets. Young and old men are leaving the workforce. That's number six. Labor Department data shows a record decline in the share of American men in the labor force. In the month of March, one in three men across the US Were not working or searching for a job. That's the lowest level of workforce participation since 1948, other than the early months of the coronavirus pandemic. The decline has been fueled by baby boomers retiring and young men dropping out of the workforce to study or because they are disabled or sick. The labor market has weakened since early 2025, and most job opportunities are concentrated in areas typically dominated by women, like healthcare and private education. That has policymakers from both parties and economists concerned about future economic growth and an increasing loneliness and disconnection among men. And at number seven, Celebrities are trademarking their voices and likenesses to try and fight AI clones in the age of AI Deepfake videos, images and audio have falsely represented public figures across the Internet. Perhaps you have been sent such a video by an elderly relation. Now some celebrities are trying to push back. Taylor Swift filed three trademark applications last month. Some legal experts thought she was trying to protect herself from misuse involving artificial intelligence. In recent years, Matthew McConaughey's lawyers have done the same. They registered trademarks with videos, audio files and images of the actor from the film dazed and confused. McConaughey's lawyers described the registrations as a maneuver to halt AI software companies or users from imitating the actor's likeness or voice without his permission. If you are a normal, non celebrity person, this is probably not a move you need to take. After all, a trademark is designed to protect against commercial use. And anyway, it's unclear if this strategy would actually hold up in court. But the hope is it may still make aspiring deepfakers more wary of making weird AI videos of Swift and McConaughey. That's the show for this week. The staff writers of the Seven are Jamie Ross, Izzanakow and me. Special thanks to Ted Muldoon, Rena Flores and Lucas Trevor for producing. John Taylor is our editor. Copyediting by Brian Molasix, Rebecca Branford and Kendra Nichols. Mixing and sound design is by Jim Briggs and Justin Gerrish. Our theme music is by Edith Mudge. I'm Hannah Jewell. Thanks for listening and have a great weekend. We'll meet you back here on.
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Narrator/Announcer
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