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AstraZeneca (AZN) said its experimental stomach cancer treatment doubled survival time in a late-stage clinical trial, strengthening prospects for a medicine the British drugmaker estimates could generate as much as $5 billion in annual sales.

The drug, sonesitatug vedotin, also known as

Halloween candy sales are declining as financially strained Americans cut back on discretionary purchases, with higher chocolate prices and rising household expenses weighing on demand ahead of the holiday.

U.S. candy sales fell 6.7% in the four weeks ended Oct. 17 from a

WASHINGTON — N’nanba (Robin Rue Simmons) has spent years trying to answer a question that has vexed the United States since the abolition of slavery: What would it actually look like to repair the damage?

In Evanston, Ill., she helped turn that question into a $25,000 housing grant for Black residents whose families were harmed by discriminatory housing policies. Now, Rue Simmons is spreading the nation’s first municipal reparations program to more than 100 communities across the country.

But as America celebrates its 250th anniversary, there is a formidable hurdle: President Trump’s administration.

The administration’s campaign against diversity, equity and inclusion programs, and its broader efforts to curtail federal support for race-based initiatives and Black history, have prompted some institutions to reconsider or quietly scale back reparations work.

Those reversals come while at least part of the world community is reexamining the past. In March the U.N. General Assembly issued a resolution declaring the trafficking of millions of enslaved Africans “the gravest crime against humanity” and calling for reparations. More than 120 countries supported the resolution — only three voted against it — Argentina, Israel and the U.S. Fifty-two, including England and 27 members of the European Union, abstained.

“Under this administration, of course, there are many barriers to achieving that, but we still stand on federal redress as our collective north star,” Rue Simmons, the chairman of Evanston’s Reparations Committee and a former city councilwoman, told the Associated Press.

For more than 3½ centuries, the transatlantic slave trade forced an estimated 12.5 million Africans aboard ships bound for the Americas; some 1.8 million didn’t survive the journey.

Roughly 388,000 enslaved people were taken to what is now the U.S. and their enslavers maintained a system of chattel slavery, treating the enslaved and their children as property, until abolition in 1865.

Enslavement deprived generations of Black Americans their freedom and any meaningful share of the fruits of their labor. Jim Crow segregation, discrimination and systemic racism further depressed the Black population’s ability to build wealth that is still largely concentrated among white families.

From the unfulfilled promise of 40 acres and a mule, to modern-day reparations proposals, initiatives to address the legacy of slavery are entering a new era of political uncertainty.

“I don’t think that there’s been any president who’s been supportive of comprehensive Black reparations — for a long time it was just taboo to even speak the word,” said William Darity, who wrote a book on reparations with A. Kirsten Mullen.

“Now, Trump will speak the word, but with hostility,” he added.

“They want to steal your money for reparations,” Trump told his supporters during a speech in September. “Our country doesn’t have that kind of money. … The people that hate our country are asking for it, but it’s going nowhere.”

Marcus Anthony Hunter, a sociologist in African American studies at UCLA, said reparations are about atoning for the past crime of chattel slavery, even if some programs come in the form of housing grants or college scholarships instead of direct cash payments.

“It’s not even a lot of money that they are given. But it comes back to the recognition, the acknowledgment, responsibility and remedy,” he said.

The Trump administration disagrees and has entered the legal fight in Evanston to stop it from happening.

The Republican administration’s attacks on modern-day repayment efforts include a lawsuit in Evanston, which was initially filed by Judicial Watch.

Michael Bekesha, who represents the plaintiffs, says the Evanston program distributes funds based on race without specific harm identification. He argues the city’s program is unlike historical reparations programs.

“The Constitution prohibits governments from picking winners and losers based entirely on race,” Beshka told the AP.

The Justice Department this month received a federal judge’s permission to intervene in the case, alleging that the city’s actions violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and the Fair Housing Act.

Last year, the Justice Department sent a letter of warning to leaders in Asheville and Buncombe County, N.C., contemplating creating their own programs.

Kiersten Pels, a spokeswoman for the Justice Department, said in a statement to the AP that “race-based government benefit programs are both unconstitutional and often violate federal civil rights laws.”

“Those implementing these programs do so in violation of federal law and the federal government has an obligation to stop them,” she said.

The White House referred questions to the Justice Department.

Georgetown University was one of the leaders, offering admission consideration for the descendants of enslaved people tied to the campus’ past, an effort that has continued despite Trump’s crackdown on campus DEI efforts.

But across higher education, new efforts have come to a standstill, said Richard Cellini, who previously led a Harvard University project to identify descendants of people enslaved by Harvard’s past leaders.

“People don’t want to talk about it, they don’t want to hear about it, they’re not hiring for it,” Cellini said.

Some Virginia universities have quietly been taking steps to provide scholarships to descendants, as required under a 2021 state law. But otherwise there has been no sign of new scholarship programs being started since Trump returned to office, said Kirt von Daacke, a University of Virginia historian who leads a consortium of colleges studying slavery.

The Georgetown initiative focuses on descendants of slaves sold by Georgetown’s Jesuit priests to slaveholders in Louisiana.

The Virginia Theological Seminary makes annual cash payments to the descendants whose family members labored on its campus during slavery and Jim Crow eras. The private institution’s program is funded by an endowment started in 2019 that has grown from $1.7 million to $2.8 million. Payments to individuals vary based on the closest lineage to the family members and continue into perpetuity.

“We believe we’re the only educational institution in the United States which makes annual cash reparations payments” with no strings attached, said Nicky Burridge, the seminary’s spokeswoman.

“The moral repair, the healing aspect is as great as the monetary one,” said Ebonee Davis-Hayes, its director of reparations.

Hussein, Fields and Binkley write for the Associated Press.

Multiple significant insider purchases in Cleveland-Cliffs, Dynex Capital, PepsiCo, and Applied Digital, often at substantial personal cost and sometimes after recent price declines, indicate executives perceive value or future upside potential in these companies.

Gains and losses were shaped by quarterly earnings, technical momentum (for CSGP), sector-specific news such as SpaceX’s interest in cell sites (boosting CCI), and factors like changes in investment guidance (pressuring BNL) or reduced revenue from amortization (impacting CCI).

September 2: Chris Wright, Delcy Rodríguez and Paula Henao at the contract-signing ceremony for new deals with Chevron, Eni, and GE Vernova.

The lights could come back on in Maracaibo without Venezuelans gaining the capacity to change their government. More unsettlingly, restoring power to their homes could help keep those governing them in place.

This is the possibility taking shape in Venezuela. Chavismo’s relationship with Washington has changed under the pressure of American intervention; new investment could improve services while giving both the government and its foreign partners a growing interest in preserving the arrangement that delivers those improvements.

The issue goes beyond whether chavismo has abandoned its ideology: the infrastructure sustaining its power is being rebuilt around different relationships. Democratic demands now confront a governing system whose continuity may serve interests extending well beyond Venezuela.

A different foundation for continuity

Maduro remained after July 28, 2024, but maintaining control of the State could not repair the gap between holding office and having a credible electoral mandate. When US forces captured him in January 2026, that legitimacy deficit shaped the international response. Although there were international condemnations of the operation, opposing the use of force and defending Maduro’s right to govern were different positions. Some governments rejected his claim to the presidency while still questioning the intervention. 

Nevertheless, Maduro’s removal left much of the chavista governing apparatus in place. Under Delcy Rodríguez, that apparatus faces a powerful external actor that can influence its room to manoeuvre. Pragmatism is therefore more than an ideological preference: cooperation with Washington has become a condition of political survival.

Tension arises when immediate commercial stability becomes tied to particular officeholders and agreements whose terms a democratic government might review.

For Washington, the authorities in Caracas can authorize contracts and implement agreements. For those authorities, cooperation offers resources and international acceptance. Their interests are different, but they can converge around continuity.

That convergence is acquiring a material basis. On October 17, Rodríguez announced expectations of almost $76 billion in oil investment over five years. These are anticipated investments, rather than money already spent. As contracts, payments and operations develop, however, businesses may become increasingly dependent on the officials and arrangements enabling them.

This does not make democracy incompatible with American investment. Accountable institutions could offer stronger guarantees over time. Tension arises when immediate commercial stability becomes tied to particular officeholders and agreements whose terms a democratic government might review. Political change can then appear as a risk to be postponed.

What changes behind the light switch

In my earlier article on infrastructure after the earthquakes, I argued that relationships, trust and coordination are as necessary to a response as machinery. Electricity works the same way. A power station depends on engineers, maintenance routines, payments and decisions about where resources go.

In my sociotechnical research, a cultural infrastructure framework helps distinguish three connected levels. The first is what people experience. The second is how work is organized to provide it. The third concerns who has authority, whose expertise counts and what makes their decisions acceptable or open to challenge.

During Maduro’s presidency, the drought of 2016 and the blackouts of 2019 exposed failures across all three. Households lost electricity. Behind the outages were maintenance problems, fuel shortages and the loss of experienced staff. An assessment by the Inter-American Development Bank also identified weak planning and the absence of independent regulation. Repairing machinery could not, by itself, correct the arrangements allowing the system to deteriorate.

Venezuelans may receive better electricity without gaining a meaningful say in how the system operates.

Under Delcy, the third level has changed profoundly. Washington now helps shape the conditions for reconstruction, and international suppliers offer access to equipment and expertise. The US Department of Energy describes an agreement with GE Vernova to modernize the grid and expand generation over several years.

That shift could enable changes in the second level, from procurement and contractor payments to maintenance and staffing. Those changes could eventually improve the first level, with fewer outages and more reliable services. However, Reuters reported in May that suppliers still faced uncertainty over payments, project priorities and authorizations. Announcements do not remove accumulated failures.

The important distinction is that changing who authorizes recovery does not necessarily give citizens more authority over it. The third level can be extensively reorganized between governments and companies while remaining closed to the people who depend on the service.

Whose stability, and for how long?

Electricity makes the resulting tension concrete. An oil producer needs reliable power. A household needs it too. Investment serving production could benefit both, but shared need does not ensure equal influence over which installations are repaired first or which communities wait.

If those priorities are negotiated mainly between officials and investors, Venezuelans may receive better electricity without gaining a meaningful say in how the system operates. Successful repairs could strengthen the government’s public standing while making commercial partners more invested in its continuity.

The different timescales matter. As I argued in “Venezuela Isn’t Transitioning. It’s Operating,” daily life follows immediate needs while political change moves on another timetable. A repaired installation may reduce outages before the wider network has dependable maintenance. Sustaining improvements requires organizational capacity. Establishing public accountability requires political decisions that neither repairs nor foreign investment can make automatically.

Venezuelans should not have to choose between functioning services and political rights. Nor should investors have to depend on indefinite chavista rule for contracts to be secure.

Meanwhile, every contract and operational dependency can make the emerging arrangement harder to alter. A process presented as temporary stabilization could acquire beneficiaries with reasons to prolong it. Recovery would then help rebuild the foundations of chavista power before the question of democratic authority is settled.

That is why an electoral timetable matters alongside investment commitments. US-backed talks involving Dinorah Figuera continue while María Corina Machado remains outside the process and no firm election date has been established. The practical question is whether citizens acquire enforceable rights to scrutinize and replace their government while economic arrangements are being consolidated.

Reliable electricity would be a real improvement, but Venezuelans should not have to choose between functioning services and political rights. Nor should investors have to depend on indefinite chavista rule for contracts to be secure.

Chavismo’s pragmatism is rebuilding the relationships through which it can survive. Whether that reconstruction also serves democracy depends on who can challenge its terms. The lights coming back on may show that the system works better; the decisive political test is whether Venezuelans can change the people running it.