Iran Talks Heat Up, Carroll Case Gets Criminal, and AI's Trillion-Dollar Moment

MayaGood morning and welcome to the morning rundown. I'm here with David, and we have a lot to get through today.

DavidYeah, no shortage of headlines. Like, where do we even start?

MayaRight? So top of the list, J.D. Vance is saying the U.S. and Iran are very close to a ceasefire deal. The BBC's got it, Axios has it.

DavidClose, but not there yet. And meanwhile, Netanyahu was ordering Israeli forces to take control of 70% of Gaza. The Financial Times is reporting that.

Maya70%! That's wild, right? And Israel launched hundreds of airstrikes on Lebanon this week, while Israeli and Lebanese officials are heading to Washington for Pentagon talks.

DavidA lot moving at once over there. We'll get into all of it.

MayaThen on the domestic side, the DOJ has opened a criminal probe into the funding behind E. Jean Carroll's lawsuits against Trump. NBC News and The Washington Post both reporting on that.

DavidAnd the FBI's warning about a phishing scheme called Kali365. Live targeting Microsoft Teams and Outlook users, no password needed to hijack your account apparently.

MayaGreat. Super reassuring.

DavidYeah, totally fine. Plus, Anthropic just hit a $965 billion valuation leapfrogging OpenAI.

MayaBig morning. Let's get into it, starting with the Middle East. All right, good morning. Here's where things stand in the Middle East right now. And honestly, there's a lot moving at once.

DavidYeah, so let's start with Iran. J.D. Vance was on the record saying the U.S. and Iran are, quote, very close to a deal, but then he added, not there yet.

MayaAnd that gap matters because according to the BBC, U.S. officials said a ceasefire extension framework has basically been agreed pending approval from Trump and Iran's leadership. So we're at the one yard line.

DavidRight, and Reuters reported oil fell over 1% just on those reports. That's how much pressure is sitting on this. Markets moved on a rumor.

MayaThat's wild, right? 1% drop before anything's even signed.

DavidWhich tells you everything about what a deal, an actual deal, would do to oil prices.

MayaAnd look, the conservative read here is that U.S. pressure toward a deal isn't weakness, it's pragmatic. You want the Strait of Hormuz open. You want oil stable. That's in everyone's interest.

DavidTotally. And Axios is reporting this is a ceasefire extension, not a full normalization. So let's not get ahead of ourselves. Trump and his team have thought they were close before and talks stalled.

MayaMultiple times.

DavidMultiple times. So very close is not the same as done.

MayaOkay, so while that's hanging in the air, Gaza is escalating. The Financial Times reported that Netanyahu has ordered Israeli forces to take control of 70% of Gaza.

David70 percent? That's not a targeted operation anymore.

MayaNo, it's not. That's a major shift in scope. Netanyahu's framing is that Israel is squeezing Hamas while also escalating in southern Lebanon at the same time.

DavidYeah, and the Lebanon piece is significant too. DW reported that Israeli... got launched hundreds of airstrikes on Lebanon this week.

MayaHundreds.

DavidAnd now Israeli and Lebanese officials are heading to Washington for security talks at the Pentagon.

MayaUm, which is honestly a sign that back-channel diplomacy is still moving, even while the bombs are dropping. That's not nothing.

DavidNo, it's actually kind of encouraging in a weird way. You're talking to each other. That matters.

MayaSo you've got three threads happening simultaneously. Iran on the edge of a deal, Gaza being carved up. Lebanon in active strikes but heading into talks.

DavidIt's a lot, and they're all connected. If the Iran deal collapses again, you lose leverage across all of it.

MayaExactly. The Iran framework, if it holds, is what gives the U.S. any standing to push both sides in Gaza and Lebanon towards something resembling stability.

DavidAnd Vance knows that, which is probably why he's talking publicly about being close. There's pressure being applied here.

MayaRight, this is an escalation. You don't say very close on the record unless you want both sides to feel the heat to finish it.

DavidSo it's a negotiating move as much as a status update.

MayaPossibly. Look, we'll see, but the Pentagon talks with Lebanon are genuinely worth watching. That's where you'll know if the diplomatic track is real or just optics.

DavidAgreed. And oil markets are basically a real-time signal on all of this. If prices keep drifting down... Traders think a deal is coming. If they spike, something went wrong.

MayaYour oil price is your news alert.

DavidBasically, yeah.

MayaSo here's a question to sit with. If all this pressure from the White House is being applied right now in the Middle East, what does that say about how this administration is using federal power more broadly?

DavidThat is a very good question, Maya.

MayaBecause there's some news back home that fits that same theme pretty squarely. Shifting gears to some domestic news that's been moving fast.

DavidYeah, and there's a lot here. Let's start with the DOJ story, because this one's pretty significant. The Justice Department has opened a criminal investigation into E. Jean Carroll's lawsuits against Trump, and specifically into a Democratic-aligned non-profit that helped pay her legal bills.

MayaWait, a criminal probe? Not just looking into it, but actually criminal?

DavidCriminal. NBC News confirmed it.

MayaYeah.

DavidAnd according to the Washington Post, the investigation centers anchors partly on Carroll's statements during her civil lawsuit deposition.

MayaSo this isn't about re-litigating the jury verdict, it's about whether the funding of that litigation crossed a legal line.

DavidExactly. And look, however you feel about the underlying case, the question of third-party groups quietly bankrolling litigation is a real legal issue. If money flowed in ways that weren't disclosed, that's worth scrutiny.

MayaThe New York Times piece on this noted that scrutiny is now turning toward Toward private citizens who are involved in antagonizing Trump. Some people read that as payback, others as equal application of the law.

DavidYeah, and that tension is just kind of baked into this whole situation. The DOJ says it's following the law wherever it leads. Critics say the timing is suspicious. Both things get said every time something like this happens.

MayaRight. No easy answers there. But people should know it's happening.

DavidAgreed. Okay, so separately, a federal judge declined to block Trump's executive order on mail-in voting, at least for now. So the changes are going forward?

MayaFor now,

Davidyeah. The New York Times reported the judge held off on issuing a block, which means the administration's changes stay in place while the legal fight continues. That's a real win for the White House.

MayaMail-in voting has been contested territory since 2020, Mail-in voting has been contested territory since 2020, and getting a court to not intervene, even temporarily, is meaningful.

DavidMm-hmm. And it's not the final word. This will get appealed probably more than once. once; but as a first ruling the Administration will take it.

MayaOkay, and then there's a Supreme Court ruling that I think deserves a quick mention because it's actually a pretty striking legal development.

DavidTerry Pitchford.

MayaI've heard right?

DavidYeah. Mississippi death row inmate? The Washington Post covered it. He's been arguing for two decades that his conviction was tainted by racially biased jury selection. The Supreme Court sided with him.

MayaAnd this isn't a political story so much as an institutional one. The court looked at a case, looked at the evidence of racial bias in how jurors were picked, and said, that's not okay.

DavidWhich, whatever your politics, that's the system working. Slowly, but working.

MayaTwo decades. Slowly-the quiet laugh.

DavidI mean, yeah. But still.

MayaFair enough. All right, so the DOJ probe on the Carroll case is the big one to watch, the mail-in voting ruling is a short-term win for Trump, and the Supreme Court reminded everyone it'll still step in on due process.

DavidBusy courts.

MayaAlways. And speaking of big money moving in ways nobody quite expected, we've got a wild AI story to get into.

DavidOh, this one, the Anthropic number?

MayaThe Anthropic number, buckle up. Lop.

DavidOkay, shifting gears to tech, and David, this one genuinely surprised me.

MayaWhat are we talking?

DavidAnthropic, the company behind Claude, their valuation just hit $965 billion. They leapfrogged OpenAI.

MayaWait, really? Anthropic past OpenAI?

DavidAccording to Reuters and Al Jazeera, yeah, they just closed a $65 billion funding round. around nearly a trillion dollar valuation.

MayaI mean, that's a number, but what does it actually say?

DavidSo here's the thing. It's not just hype chasing. Enterprise customers have been moving towards Anthropic in a big way. There's a trust factor baked into Claude that companies seem to prefer when they're putting AI into serious workflows.

MayaRight, and OpenAI has had some messy public moments. Leadership drama, the Sam Altman saga. Anthropic kind of positioned itself as the quieter more reliable option not

DavidExactly. So the money is following that perception, nearly a trillion dollars worth.

Mayatoo bad for the responsible AI lane

DavidNot bad at all. And speaking of AI doing things in the real world, the New York Times had a piece today about Schneider Electric, a French manufacturer, using AI on the factory floor to make workers more productive rather than replace them. Then replace them.

MayaHmm, that's a different story than you usually hear.

DavidIt is. Most of the AI-and-jobs coverage is about layoffs. This is the other version. Whether it scales beyond one company is a real question, but it's worth noting that the model exists.

MayaRight, Right. And honestly, if you're a worker, you want to see more of that model.

DavidFor sure. Okay, now the thing I actually want everyone to hear before they close the app.

MayaNo.

DavidThe FBI issued an urgent warning this week. and Inc covered it. There's a phishing scheme actively targeting Microsoft Teams, Outlook, and OneDrive users.

MayaOh, that's basically everyone with a work laptop.

DavidNothing, the activity kit is called Kali365, and here's what makes it different. It doesn't steal your password.

MayaWait, how does it get in then?

DavidIt hijacks your session. So you log in normally, you're authenticated, and then the kit It intercepts that active session token. Password is irrelevant at that point.

MayaSo two factor authentication doesn't save you.

DavidNot necessarily, no, because you already cleared that step when you logged in. The session is what gets grabbed.

MayaThat's actually scary, like legitimately.

DavidIt is. And what's wild is the FBI says low-skill scammers are using this. It's not nation-state stuff. It's widely available.

MayaSo what do people actually do?

DavidA few things: be skeptical of any unexpected Teams messages with links, especially from outside your organization, log out of sessions you're not actively using, and if your company has session timeout policies, this is a good reason to enforce them.

MayaAlso probably a good moment to check whether your organization has conditional access rules set up in Microsoft's admin tools.

DavidYes, that's the IT version of the advice, but yeah, the point is, this one's moving fast and it's hitting real inboxes right now.

MayaGood catch. Genuinely useful for anyone who just heard that on their commute.

DavidAll right, that's a wrap on today's episode. A lot to sit with.

MayaYeah, I mean, the Iran deal conversation really stuck with me. Markets moved on a rumor. That tells you everything about the pressure behind those talks.

DavidRight? And the Gaza 70% order? That's a strategic shift, not a tactical one. Worth watching closely.

MayaBig picture today, diplomacy is loud, messy, and somehow still moving.

DavidBasically.

MayaHey, if you got something out of today's show, subscribe and leave us a review. It genuinely helps.

DavidIt does. Thanks for spending your morning with us, seriously.

MayaWe'll be back tomorrow. Stay curious, everyone.

DavidSee you then.