May 14 2025

U.S.-Saudi Arabia Solidify Ties With $600b in Deals, Aiming for $1 Trillion Partnership

RFK Jr.'s Push to Label Pesticides as Health Risk Meets Resistance Within White House, Agencies

AI a "Second Set of Eyes," Not a Replacement for Radiologists, Mayo Clinic Experience Suggests

DOGE Under Scrutiny as Promised Savings Fail to Materialize in Treasury Data

U.S. President Engages New Syrian Leader, First Such Meeting in 25 Years

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1. U.S.-Saudi Arabia Solidify Ties With $600b in Deals, Aiming for $1 Trillion Partnership

Donald Trump hailed the US’s relationship with Saudi Arabia on Tuesday, just hours after the White House unveiled what it said was $600bn worth of defence, artificial intelligence and other deals with the kingdom. The US president lauded the kingdom and its de facto leader, Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, as he began the first leg of his dealmaking, three-nation tour of the oil-rich Gulf. “He’s an incredible man, I’ve known him a long time now. There’s nobody like him,” Trump said to a packed auditorium in Riyadh. Among the guests were Elon Musk, the world’s richest man, private equity baron Stephen Schwarzman, Nvidia boss Jensen Huang and dozens of other US executives. The US-Saudi relationship had been a “bedrock” of security and prosperity, Trump said. Prince Mohammed said the two countries would work over the coming months to increase the total to $1tn.

FT

2. RFK Jr.'s Push to Label Pesticides as Health Risk Meets Resistance Within White House, Agencies

WASHINGTON—A bid by Health Secretary Robert F. Kennedy Jr. to label pesticides as a potential cause of U.S. health woes has attracted pushback from some White House and agency officials who are concerned the move would disrupt the food supply chain, according to people familiar with the debate. Kennedy, who is spearheading a coming report to “Make America Healthy Again,” wants to highlight what he views as the deleterious impact of pesticides, people familiar with the matter said. He previously campaigned on removing pesticides from the food supply. White House officials have raised concerns about the pesticide push and are closely reviewing the coming report, the people said, though it wasn’t clear where President Trump himself stood on the issue. And some officials at the Environmental Protection Agency, which regulates pesticides, and Agriculture Department have cast doubt on Kennedy’s desire to cast weedkillers as harmful to health.

WSJ

3. AI a "Second Set of Eyes," Not a Replacement for Radiologists, Mayo Clinic Experience Suggests

Today, radiologists — the physician specialists in medical imaging who look inside the body to diagnose and treat disease — are still in high demand. A recent study from the American College of Radiology projected a steadily growing work force through 2055. That’s true for radiologists at the Mayo Clinic, one of the nation’s premier medical systems, whose main campus is in Rochester, Minn. There, in recent years, they have begun using A.I. to sharpen images, automate routine tasks, identify medical abnormalities and predict disease. A.I. can also serve as “a second set of eyes.” “But would it replace radiologists? We didn’t think so,” said Dr. Matthew Callstrom, the Mayo Clinic’s chair of radiology, recalling the 2016 prediction. “We knew how hard it is and all that is involved.” Computer scientists, labor experts and policymakers have long debated how A.I. will ultimately play out in the work force. Will it be a clever helper, enhancing human performance, or a robotic surrogate, displacing millions of workers? The debate has intensified as the leading-edge technology behind chatbots appears to be improving faster than anticipated. Leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic and other companies in Silicon Valley now predict that A.I. will eclipse humans in most cognitive tasks within a few years. But many researchers foresee a more gradual transformation in line with seismic inventions of the past, like electricity or the internet.

NYT

4. DOGE Under Scrutiny as Promised Savings Fail to Materialize in Treasury Data

Six months after Donald Trump officially announced the formation of Musk’s cost-cutting vehicle, the so-called Department of Government Efficiency (Doge), it has yet to find a fraction of that initial sum [$2t] on a one-off basis, let alone make the sort of cuts that would reduce spending year after year. While Doge’s website claims $170bn in savings, an FT investigation shows that only a sliver of that figure can actually be verified. Instead, there is evidence of inflated valuations being used to boost the numbers, while contracts that were already lapsing have been claimed as new savings. At the same time, US Treasury data has so far shown no drop in government spending. As Doge has struggled to make headway, it has strained to paint a positive picture: to beef up its claims, its website mixes recurring cuts to federal spending through workforce reductions along with temporary or one-off influxes of cash from the sale of federal properties and contract cancellations.

FT

5. U.S. President Engages New Syrian Leader, First Such Meeting in 25 Years

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia—President Trump met Syria’s new president here after announcing that he would lift crippling economic sanctions on the war-torn country and signing a bevy of Saudi investment deals on the first day of his Middle East tour. Trump shook hands with Ahmed al-Sharaa, who also embraced Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, in photos released after the meeting that the White House said lasted 33 minutes. A U.S. spokesman said it was the first encounter between presidents of the two countries in 25 years. Trump encouraged Sharaa to normalize relations with Israel, kick “all foreign terrorists” out of Syria and help defeat Islamic State, including taking over detention camps in the country’s northeast currently run by U.S.-backed Kurdish forces, according to the White House. It said Sharaa had affirmed his commitment to a 1974 disengagement agreement with Israel, which has bombed Syrian military sites and seized control of areas in the country’s south since Sharaa’s rebel group helped oust longtime dictator Bashar al-Assad in December.

WSJ

May 14, 1804: Lewis and Clark depart to explore the Northwest

In a landmark transaction that would forever reshape the American landscape, President Thomas Jefferson purchased the vast Louisiana Territory from France in 1803 for approximately $15 million - equivalent to roughly $430 million in 2025 dollars. The territory, spanning approximately 828,000 square miles (2.14 million square kilometers), nearly doubled the size of the young United States overnight. This massive acquisition, larger than modern-day France, Spain, Germany, Italy, and the United Kingdom combined, was sold by Napoleon Bonaparte, who had only recently acquired it from Spain in a secret treaty as Spain faced mounting financial difficulties. To explore this tremendous new frontier, Jefferson commissioned Meriwether Lewis and William Clark to lead their famous expedition across the territory in 1804, beginning an epic journey of discovery that would map the region and document its resources, geography, and indigenous populations for the expanding nation. The Lewis and Clark expedition would become deeply woven into the American narrative of westward expansion, embodying the pioneering spirit that defined the nation's development and establishing a powerful cultural mythology of exploration, manifest destiny, and continental conquest that continues to shape American identity to this day.

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Sources

1. https://www.ft.com/content/5302d5d2-d375-4327-905c-7b1ad5173105
2. https://www.wsj.com/politics/policy/rfk-jr-pesticides-agriculture-d23ae280?mod=hp_lead_pos1
3. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/14/technology/ai-jobs-radiologists-mayo-clinic.html
4. https://www.ft.com/content/085430ab-27fe-46fc-a798-1059649d3b32
5. https://www.wsj.com/world/middle-east/trump-meets-new-syrian-leader-after-announcing-end-of-sanctions-96146296?mod=hp_lead_pos2